Future of Farming for YBS Farmers: From Autonomous Planters to Vet Schools

[00:00:07.020] - Chris Griffin
Welcome to Back to your Roots, a podcast that provides insight into all things farming, financing, and farm life, guiding you Back to your Roots. Thanks for joining us again on Back to your Roots. I'm your host, Chris Griffin. Today, we got a special guest for sure. If you're in agriculture, you know a lot about this gentleman. But we've got Dr. Tony Brandon. He was a former dean of agriculture at Murray State University. For those people who don't know, tell us a little bit about your background and how long you were at Murray. I know you're involved or still involved with Wave Ag. Heck, you even spoke at Rotary Club in Paducah for me, and I did a whole ag month. You, along with Dr. Parr, came and everybody had a lot of positive things to say. Tell us a little about yourself and educate the listeners for us.

[00:01:01.490] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Great. As old as I am, that's a long story, but we'll start. I'm a farm boy, born and raised on a farm. Cut my teeth on the steering wheel of an Alice Chalmer's Model B tractor and went to graduate, I was a state officer in FFA, very fond of the FFA. Went to Murray State, major in the ag education. It always said I didn't want to teach, though, and what I ended up doing, I taught for 40-some-od years. I started out as a high school I had a teacher down in Tennessee, down at Peabody High School in Trenton, Tennessee. Then went to Oklahoma State, and I had one goal, and that was come back to Murray State. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that in 1988. Spent 34 and a half years there before I retired in January of 2023. Last '25 as dean of the Hudson School of Agriculture, we morphed through a department, through a school, and then the Hudson School of Agriculture, and saw a lot growth, worked with a lot of great people. I had the opportunity to actually hire every faculty member that was there, was under my tenure when we left, except Dr. Kennedy was there when I got there, and we retired at the same time.

[00:02:15.990] - Dr. Tony Brannon
So great opportunity to serve the region and serve Murray State there. And then after retirement, I got to answer the phone one day, and they wanted to talk to me about this WAVE Ag Group. It's the West Kentucky Alliance for Vital Economy. It's the county judges in the river counties, so important to agriculture, Fulton, Carlisle, Hickman, and Ballard. And they had an WAVE Ag Group that spun off of that to put emphasis on ag and ag development and Economic Development. They called and wanted to talk to me, and I just jotted down some notes on the back of it. We were sitting there in the lunch, and said, we want to hear your ideas. We're going to hire you. And former director, Steven Elder, done a great and he had decided, had a promotion and some other changes and to give that position up. I really, first of all, wasn't looking for a job, but I got to thinking about the young farmers in the region. That region was traditionally very strong in young farmers and young farmer organizations. Some good friends of mine and former students were teachers in that area.

[00:03:28.230] - Dr. Tony Brannon
When they retired, they didn't replace them. I made a few calls with the state level, and they said, Sure, we'd be glad to help fund a part-time. That was really the deciding factor for me to come out of retirement and go back to work. We've done a lot with the young farmers there. Thanks to River Valley for stepping up.

[00:03:47.570] - Chris Griffin
You talking about pulling those resources together, I think it's really important for Western Kentucky in general, because even McCracken area, you hear about them trying to get things done here in McCracken County or Paducah or wherever it is. Sometimes that one voice isn't loud enough. If you have enough counties that have something to say and they can pull those resources and that knowledge together, it does make a huge impact. That Wave Ag definitely offers that opportunity. It's a great organization. I know River Valley, from day one that I got here, it was something I learned about probably on my first day of training. I remember my first way back day. I went to, was at Columbus Belmont State Park. It's pretty hot that day, I remember actually. I was in some long pants and button up shirt. I think I had to wear, but it was hot, but it was a really neat day. You could see the enthusiasm, and I think that's what it's all about.

[00:04:55.080] - Dr. Tony Brannon
It's built a lot of momentum in that area. We continue to build and we want to add value. We talk a lot in agriculture about value-added, and we want this to be a value-added organization that adds value to the current agriculture. We feel like we made a lot of progress.

[00:05:14.190] - Chris Griffin
When you were talking about you pull that economic impact of those river counties, what does that number look like? I don't think people realize the amount of agriculture that's there. Obviously, you've got the rivers that are close. Can you explain that and educate the listeners on what that dollar amount might look like economically.

[00:05:34.990] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Another big asset of that region, obviously, is our river ports. One of the efforts that Wave was formed was to support an additional river port at Wickliffe, and they continue to work on that. A lot of the agriculture products go up and down that Mississippi River. So that's a big asset to the region, and it's a big asset to agriculture. And it allows an advantage to those farmers that they are able to deliver their products a little bit closer than some of the other farmers of the region. So it's very... the economic vitality, I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but it contributes significantly to the economic development of that region.

[00:06:24.050] - Chris Griffin
Well, I think even being here, I don't think people realize the amount of agriculture that there is, especially if you don't live in those counties or maybe aren't familiar with agriculture and farming. It's pretty astounding. The other thing is, and I had a conversation yesterday with one of our borrowers, it's a gambling game. They're laying it all out there every single year and taking a lot of risk, but a lot of times there's a lot of reward on the back end. It's, I think, just continue to educate people, not even the farmers, but obviously people who aren't as familiar with agriculture is important and for people to appreciate them and what they do on a yearly basis. As far Well, go ahead.

[00:07:16.530] - Dr. Tony Brannon
I've always said, when you have manufacturing, it's always easy to look at that plant and say, Oh, that's important to our region. But agriculture is everywhere, and we get so used to it, everybody forgets how important actually it is in being our number one industry. Thank God for farmers. As they say, legalize gambling. Why should farmers have all the fun? It is a gamble, one year after another.

[00:07:45.930] - Chris Griffin
Well, it is funny because my wife, sometimes I come home and I'm talking about just work or whatever, and she's like, man, those farmers, she's like, They got to have a little bit of... They got some risk in gambling in them because she was like, that's a scary and she owns her own business, and it's not the same. She said, man, every year, they throw it out there, and there's so many factors that are completely out of their control, and weather, and everything else. It is a crazy game. But, man, the guys who know how to do it, they do really well.

[00:08:21.870] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Farmers are the eternal optimist.

[00:08:24.410] - Chris Griffin
Oh, yeah. It's next year's always going to be better. You better be, or you're going to be hurting a lot. When you talk about young farmers, what's that criteria or stipulation look like to be a part of young farmers in the river counties?

[00:08:42.100] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Well, basically, it's just to display interest and you can join. A couple of years ago, they tried to put an age limit on it, and they voted that down real quick. It's supposed to be 40 and younger, but we call it the Young and Adult Farmer program.

[00:09:03.630] - Chris Griffin
Young and Adult.

[00:09:04.250] - Chris Griffin
Yeah. It's almost like young in beginning, almost.

[00:09:09.270] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Yeah, right. Basically, it's open to anyone that has an interest in agriculture. We got several people that are in the retail and business area that have joined the Young Farmer Group just for the association with the young farmers and to help. They're not all actually in production agriculture, but all have an interest in agriculture. We've had a slow beginning to get everybody active back in the state level. We did have a couple of state winners this year that's in our program. Colin Cooper and Maddie Schmidt attended the state convention, and then Joel Reddick and Jonathan Reynolds both won state contest through the Young Farmers. So, it's a network organization, and they also have an award structure. So, it's been very good.

[00:09:59.980] - Chris Griffin
Obviously, you've been in the college setting, and then you farm yourself, and then you've been part of Wave Ag. If you were going to give some advice to graduating students, but also just individuals who want to get into farming, what What's some key words of advice and ideas that you would give them?

[00:10:21.290] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Yeah, my high school ag teacher, I'll never forget the day he come in. At that time, it was most all boys in ag. He said, Boys, there are two ways to get involved in agriculture, get involved in farming, inherit it or marry it. For years, that was the way it is. There is a big effort led by Farm Bureau and others on transition, farmland transition. It's very, very, I guess, historic that the land and the farm and operation has been passed down from generation to generation. But not everybody that generation that's active or it wants to continue it. So it's tough to get involved, but perseverance, number one. And you got to love it. You spoke to that a while ago. Farmers are optimists. They love what they do. There's some degree of independence. And there's an opportunity. There are some wealthy farmers. There are some farmers that are just struggling to go by. There's a lot of land-rich agriculturalists. They may be land-rich, but they may have cash flow issues. So obviously, find a good financer would be one if you're getting into that. But it's about your network. That's what I would say.

[00:11:43.170] - Dr. Tony Brannon
There are people that will help people get established. And farmers are notorious for sharing. They're not, well, this is my secret, and I'm not going to share it. You get one farmer that cranks up the tractor and starts in the spring, and all the rest of them will be looking. They're competitive by their general nature, but they're also willing to share with others.

[00:12:08.400] - Chris Griffin
Yeah. That perseverance is a big one. That's a great word of advice for anybody graduating college, honestly, because life throws you a lot of crazy curves balls when you think you got everything under control and you got to learn how to water off your back. It's how you have to handle that. But I think- You never know.

[00:12:33.300] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Like I said, I always was in education, but said I didn't want to teach, and look where I ended up. Now I always said I wanted to farm, and now here, some years later, I'm able I'll never do that, at least part time.

[00:12:47.120] - Chris Griffin
My wife always sometimes I'm like, I'll never do that. She's like, That's the worst thing to say because about the time you say that, you'll end up doing it. When you make those ultimatum ending statements. I think the main thing is, and I know right now, there is some struggles going on. What are some concerns, especially for the young farmers, just the farming community in general, that you've seen and things that we might see in 2025?

[00:13:20.040] - Dr. Tony Brannon
You always got to put it at the top of the list, production concerns. We're very weather dependent. And then we're very... There is not too many people in American society that can produce the way an American farmer can and yet not know what they're going to get paid for it. We're at the discretion of the markets, and the markets are fickle. Certainly, agriculture commodities have been in the news. We want to keep our export markets. We must have our export markets, but we must also build demand within the country. So, you got to keep one eye on the market, one eye on the weather, one eye on the task list that is to be done. Certainly, having the financing in place and multi-year business plan and some diversification. I've always preached diversification, both in crops. I just hate to put, as they say, all my eggs in one basket. But this area of agriculture is blessed with a good poultry operation, with some hog operations, with some now vegetables coming into our area. And of course, our staple was tobacco. And tobacco is still economically important, but it's just a fewer number than it was at one point.

[00:14:50.240] - Dr. Tony Brannon
So, I would just say that you just got to keep a tune to what's going on. And there are a good number of government programs. They're in place for a reason, and that is to provide the farmer a safety net. Certainly, risk management is a big, big, big tool because my dad farmed all his whole life, and he never purchased a cent of crop insurance. He passed away in 1996. My how times have changed now. Now, it would be ludicrous for anybody to be involved in agriculture and not pursue some type of risk management.

[00:15:38.270] - Chris Griffin
Yeah. Well, those are all great points. That's actually something I was going to ask about. Even your opinion, not only this year and what this year looks like, but where do you see agriculture going in the next 5, 10 years, not only from an economic standpoint, but obviously from a technology standpoint? The reason I bring that up is when you came to Rotary and spoke, you showed some things, some automated things where the piece of equipment was in the field by itself, and you showed a video of that. Can you go into that a little bit and how that might help with some cost? I mean, it's always going to cost more money to probably get those, but in the future on cost efficiency and cutting some of that overhead.

[00:16:29.710] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Yeah, Yes, I have a saying that says, It's not my granddaddy's agriculture anymore. He had a tractor and he had one tool in the toolbox, and that was two tools, a crescent wrench and a screwdriver. Technology has changed. The autonomous planner has just been a marvelous development. Two or three decades ago, who would have thought we would have had GPS and you wouldn't have an atlas to drive your car? Now we have auto steer and we have GPS on most of our equipment. But in this case, this autonomous planter tires itself. No tractor, no driver, totally controlled by satellite. We've demonstrated it twice in this region. We have some canola trials. That's been interesting. We got three canola trials, new crop in our area, new diversification for our farmers. Looks like a promising crop. One of the problems with getting that crop in is having a tractor driver to do it in the fall. It's very time-sensitive. We just demonstrated putting this thing to work. You only put two pound per acre of that, so you can run it all day and not have to fill it up. We got three trials with some of the young farmers on an autonomous planter at various row widths.

[00:17:50.220] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Then we're now with a drone company, not just a drone for spraying five acres at a time, but this is a heavy lift drone. With Sprigg Aerospace, a company that's wanting to locate in our area, about a 70-gallon tank, spray 100 acres an hour, hopefully 1,000 acres a day. That's going to revolutionize agriculture, I think.

[00:18:13.360] - Chris Griffin
That's incredible. I We don't know about that.

[00:18:15.710] - Dr. Tony Brannon
As many fungicides as we need to use now, we need that technology. Wave Ag has been very important in bringing that to the forefront and getting some farmers engaged and even investing in that company.

[00:18:29.740] - Chris Griffin
Yeah. That's the reason I wanted to bring that up because I think for people who aren't familiar with ag, they don't know some of the advancements that are still in the early stages, but at some point, they're definitely going to become more common as they get more cost-efficient to make and buy. I didn't know about the drone sprayer and the large amount of chemical they can spray. That's incredible. I think that should be a really positive thing moving forward. One other thing, I've got two other questions. One, and it's only because I've got you on the call and I've got you cornered, is I want you to talk a little bit really quickly about the vet school at Murray. I know that you had a large hand in that. I know we're in desperate need in our area in Kentucky, but especially Western Kentucky for large animal vets. If I understand correctly, the governor has officially signed that, and so we can pursue it. But can you go in that a little bit and what that means for our area and what it means for Murray State?

[00:19:38.350] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Sure. It's a long story.

[00:19:41.000] - Chris Griffin
I remember Dr. Parr came to Rotary and talked about it, and He was pretty candid. He basically said UK doesn't want it, and that's the reason we don't have it yet is basically what he said.

[00:19:51.810] - Dr. Tony Brannon
I'll leave those direct comments to him. I'll give you my perspective. Fifty years ago, Murray State made a run at that. The only way I know to be frank and honest, Murray State wasn't prepared for a vet school 50 years ago. I know I was a student there about that time. Our facilities were not adequate for that. Our farms were not adequate for that. They were not as up to date. We made 50 years of progress. The same problem kept resurfacing. Farm Bureau, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture had task force on it. We're in need more veterinarians in our area. As someone has said, if you have a need and it's dealing with agriculture, Murray State is well-prepared for that. We developed our infrastructure. We have a vet tech program We were one of the first in the state to have that, a two-year program, and then a four-year program in vet tech. Started before I got there, but it had tremendous growth. You put our vet tech and our pre-vet students together, and it was about a third of our enrollment in agriculture. There's a lot of students that have a lot of needs, but we would start out with 100 students interested in pre-veterinary medicine.

[00:21:08.550] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Then when you get down to applying and getting admitted, you got 15 or 20. Some can because of the grades. Some of them decided it wasn't a career for them, but some of them just couldn't get into vet school. The effort that was started, which I applaud of getting Murray State to that position, there's one factor, sometimes that's overlooked, and that is the state's economic condition. Throughout almost my entire tenure, we took budget cut after budget cut after budget cut because basically the state had no funding. Well, the last couple of years, look what's happened. All of a sudden, there's some surplus funding for infrastructure, for buildings. We were very fortunate to get a new tech Veterinary Center in the tailspan of that after 2020 or so, opened a new vet center at Hopkinsville. We have one of the only programs in the nation that has a veterinary diagnostic lab, a pre-vet program, and a vet tech program. And now, if this is successful, a vet school So it will well position us through the distributive model. People like Lyme College in Arkansas and Arkansas State, and a number of people are adding vet schools.

[00:22:26.930] - Dr. Tony Brannon
If so, why not Murray State? And The leadership, including President Jackson and Dean Parr, went to work on that. And it's been a good effort. It's mobilized our region, really. People that hadn't necessarily been supportive of agriculture have seen the needs. They've come out and support a lot of counties, a lot of county judge executives, a lot of county magistrates associations. I appreciate you asking me. We had a lot of progress through the years leading up to this. It's not done yet, but hopefully in the near future, we'll have that opportunity for students. When you're retired and you're gone, not too many people actually ask your opinion on something. I at least respect you for asking me my opinion.

[00:23:15.100] - Chris Griffin
Well, because the reality is, I know it happened after you left, but I would still feel like you laid a lot of that groundwork. You really established that ag program. Even if you're not part of it right now, you are still a part of that and laid a lot of that foundation. I have one last question before we get off here. One last plug. If you're interested in being part of the Young Farmers program, how do you go about getting signed up for that? Where would you go? Website, anything like that that we could give them?

[00:23:47.790] - Dr. Tony Brannon
We're active on Facebook. We have a Wave Ag Initiative Facebook site, or my contact is available through that. Waveaginitiative@gmail.com is our email. Anybody can email me, get in touch with me. Or we have, I guess, a little small unelected, but a step to the forefront leadership team with One person in each county, Lucas Goodman in Fulton County, Joel Reddick in Carlisle County, Jonathan Reynolds in Hickman County, and Colin Cooper and Maddie Schmidt involved in Ballard County. You could contact any of them or myself. I want to give a plug for our chairman, Philip Bean, a farmer from Carlisle County. Phillip's not a young farmer, but he's an experienced farmer. He's one of those adult farmers that we talked about. But he is so supportive and been supportive of that effort. Devotes a lot of time and energy that people don't really realize to that. So, Phillip can help direct there, too. And we'll open that to anybody that wants to go to work and contribute to agriculture.

[00:25:00.430] - Chris Griffin
Dr. Brandon, that's what I thought it was going to be. I've talked to you before. So, we got a ton of knowledge, and you've got years of experience and good experience. Ben, like I said, for people who I know Dr. Brandon, he's a huge part of the community in our area. Like I said, I feel like you look up and he's at everything everywhere all the time. I don't know how you have. I'm not sure how you're in two places at one time, but you're there a lot. I know, I feel like. But we really appreciate you coming on the podcast. I know you're busy right now. He's actually on a tractor right now anyway.

[00:25:38.100] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Yeah, it's from the tractor seat, you might say.

[00:25:39.970] - Chris Griffin
Yeah, I think this is about as realistic of a podcast that we possibly could have. Like I said, we really appreciate you coming on. Hope you can come on again soon, and just hope everything goes great for the rest of the year.

[00:25:56.120] - Dr. Tony Brannon
Anytime. I just want to give a big plug. Yes, we had made a lot of progress at Murray State, but we did it because of a lot of good students, some great faculty that I had the opportunity to work with, and a lot of supporters like River Valley that stepped up and supported our students, supported our alumni meeting, and personally supported my family as a borrower. My sons were actually assisted through school, through scholarships from River Valley. I appreciate that. I appreciate River Valley giving back to the ag community and giving back to our young farmers in our FFA. We got so many other supporters that have just all stepped up and appreciate your support of Wave Ag as well.

[00:26:41.030] - Chris Griffin
Well, we appreciate that. As always, thanks for joining us on Back to your Roots. I'm Chris, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in to Back to your roots, where we dish the dirt on all things ag. Be sure to never miss an episode by following and subscribing. While there, leave us a review about what you want to hear next. Stay in the know between episodes by following us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. For more resources, go to our website at rivervalleyagcredit.com.