The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast
Ellen Brown, Justin Politi, and Dave Pavlik bring their 90 collective years of healthcare experience to BP2 Health where they're on a mission to effect real change in the industry. Connect with BP2 Health Here: https://bp2health.com/contact/
The Reverse Mullet Healthcare Podcast
Revolutionizing Farming with Robotics and Regenerative Practices with Clint Brauer, Greenfield Robotics
This is a must watch episode! See our Youtube channel @ https://www.youtube.com/@BP2Health-fo8ij/videos
Join us for an enlightening excursion into the heart of Kansas, where third-generation farmer Clint Brauer and his team at Greenfield Robotics are changing the face of agriculture. Discover how Clint transitioned from a third-generation farmer to a tech career in Los Angeles and back to his farming roots, driven by a personal mission to counteract the long-term health impacts of farming chemicals. Listen (or watch) as Ellen delights in our first on-location podcast, the best field-trip ever! Through our candid conversation, you’ll learn about the transformative power of regenerative agriculture and the real-world benefits of grass-fed livestock and multi-species cover crops for soil health and animal nutrition.
Experience the future of farming with us as we showcase the cutting-edge, AI-powered robots from Greenfield Robotics. Clint walks us through the incredible precision of these small yet mighty machines, which navigate narrow crop rows and manage weeds without chemicals. With the added advantage of Starlink and 4G connectivity, these robots can operate seamlessly, even at night. Hear about the practicalities of running such advanced technology on the farm, from battery management to the cost-efficiency of developing new robotic attachments.
But it’s not just about technology—it's about a personal journey and a broader vision. Clint shares how the challenges of his father’s health influenced his pivot back to farming, emphasizing sustainable practices that prioritize the microbiome and long-term soil health. We also delve into the broader implications of regenerative agriculture for human well-being and the hurdles faced in financing and scaling innovative solutions. This episode is a rich tapestry of personal anecdotes, revolutionary technology, and the promise of a healthier future for farming and food production.
hey, now reverse mullet health care podcast. What is this? Justin, a special edition. What up jay? A bonus edition? Hey, that's right so ellen's on a field trip today. Um, she went out to kansas flying into wichita. I'm not sure where in Kansas she's going. Do you know, Justin? She's going to see Greenfield Robotics. I think is what it's called.
Speaker 2:Oh, here they come. Oh, my goodness, I think we got. Oh, what is this? We have no idea. Is it grain? I don't know. Come here, is this grain? Oh, ooh.
Speaker 4:Hi guys.
Speaker 2:Come here. What is this? Never had an apple. So these are hare sheep. They're grass fed. The only time they've had grain is when I try to get them to do something. Wow, this is the wildest bunch I've ever had. I started with 40 sheep, went to 150 twice, we're down to about 20-something right now, but they multiply pretty quick.
Speaker 4:So why exactly did I go to a farm? Dave and Justin are wondering why I was even there. I don't even know if they knew that I was going to go. But the bottom line is it's really important. When we talk about food as medicine and we talk about food as health, it's understanding regenerative agriculture and what exactly it is. It's about decreasing the use of fertilizers and decreasing the use of pesticides on our foods. But why and how? Why is pretty obvious it increases the nutritional density and it decreases the chemical load on our bodies whenever we intake the food. But how do we do it? How do we do something that's basically superpower for our soil? There's all different techniques, but I'm going to try to break it down into some of the few and again, I'm no expert. I'm sure that any expert regenerative farmer is going to have their own take on this, but I'm going to give you a few of the important highlights. So, first of all, techniques like no-till farming. It leaves the soil undisturbed and it allows it to be healthy and full of life.
Speaker 4:Cover crops what is that? Planting unique plants between crops. So once you've harvested a crop, putting something different in there to basically cover the soil and protect it and add nutrition. It's composting, something we do in our own gardens. It's adding natural materials to feed the soil, rotating crops, switching up what you grow between harvests, not growing the same thing over and over again. It decreases the bugs that are going to come in, it increases the roots, it increases the density and nutrition of the soil and, finally, integrating animals for biodiversity. So, in summary, it's not just about growing nutritionally dense food. It's also about healing our planet. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's just me.
Speaker 1:So, so. So Greenfield um, she's meeting a guy named Clint and Clint Bauer, I think and um, she's going to interview him later. We're going to interview him a little bit later, but Justin and I we're going to get up to speed on what this is all about. So, looking at their website, it says food comes first, not tech, cell phones manufacturing or energy. It's agriculture that's going to see the most explosive growth in the American economy for decades to come. Okay, and then it goes on to say Greenfield Robotics. They are AI-powered botany fleet of robots are now swarming fields across the country, based in Cheney, kansas. But I want to know what these robots look like.
Speaker 3:And if they're anything like or anywhere near, I mean they've got to look like something that we've seen before Not Tweaky from Buck Rogers or R2-D2, but maybe like WALL-E or some kind of Mars rover.
Speaker 2:The reason we created these initial robots was to solve a pretty basic problem Weeds have become resistant to herbicides, and so then you have to use more of those chemicals. There's no resistance to a blade. The process is pretty simple. I am a farmer, so I designed it to work for farmers. They let us know when they planted the crop. We actually fly a drone. We use that drone to basically map the field and then we come in and we use machine vision, ai algorithms. We're determining where the rows are and, as the robots going around, they're talking to each other and deciding where they're going to go. The farmers don't have to even be there. We don't even have to be there. So we have weed cutting bots running through a field at a high speed, trying not to cut the crop. We let them know when it's done. We give them a report at the end of this, and we try to keep it as simple as possible.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of advantages to robots. One is that they're small. They're a lighter weight. They're much easier to maintain. They're much lower cost. Anything on our robots can be replaced in 15 minutes or less, and that was my edict working on poorly designed equipment growing up and throwing my wrenches across the farm. We build them ourselves right here in Kansas. The second thing is they can run day or night. Someone's going to have to work long days and nights. Is it a farmer out there on their tractor day and night, or is it a robot? Welcome to the Reverse Mullen Healthcare Podcast with BP2 Health.
Speaker 4:Welcome to the Reverse Mullen Health Care Podcast with BP2 Health. Today I am on a farm with robots and shiny canes.
Speaker 4:Yes, you are With Clint, our owner and, I guess, founder, founder, all right, I think founder sounds like cooler. Right Of Greenfield Robotics, which I can't wait. Yeah, this is like one of those episodes. It's like Justin said, it's like the Super Bowl. This is a unique. Yes, this is yeah, this is one of the Allen Super Bowl Christmas episodes. So, but first, who are we and why did we name ourselves? The Reverse Mullen Healthcare Podcast.
Speaker 3:Justin. Well, we want to be relevant, informative and creative. We also want to be entertaining and have fun. So it's party in the front and business in the back, like a mullet on the reverse.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm getting tired of saying this at the beginning of every episode. I feel like we should record something. Well, dave, I think we should record something fancy that gets plugged in, that we don't have to do it every time.
Speaker 4:Something fancy that gets plugged in that we don't have to do it every time. I think it's better this way. I thought we can kind of make it you like it to be live.
Speaker 1:Okay, yes, we are your hosts. I'm Dave Pavlik, justin Politi, ellen Brown. We're passionate, yeah, we're passionate, innovative and collaborative. We're committed to solving our industry's most important issues along with our clients, and we have a combined how many years? 90. Which makes it sound super.
Speaker 4:Makes us, yeah, let's just like click in, we really do Really Combined.
Speaker 2:That is amazing, yes.
Speaker 1:And yes which makes us We've been doing it forever.
Speaker 4:In each episode we'll dig into a hot healthcare topic and maybe dig into each other.
Speaker 3:Be gentle with me, but we really want to spend a lot of time digging into Ellen, especially today. Yes, a lot of digging, so let's start right now.
Speaker 1:So, ellen, why on earth are you on a farm in Kansas when we work in healthcare?
Speaker 3:And did you meet the Tin man and the Kindly Lion? I saw the witch. The fearful lion. You saw the witch.
Speaker 1:You are the witch, the fearful lion. You saw the witch. You are the witch Ellen. Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
Speaker 4:My father would tell you that I am a good witch. He loves the Wizard of Oz so much that we went to the Wizard of Oz Museum in Kansas. During COVID we did a road trip with my son. It was kind of post-covid, like we were allowed to be out again, but we did a road trip and we went to that museum and on my wedding day my father had one of those, glenda. You know how? Glenda had the wand with star at the end. You may not know this fact. Sort of um, he literally had that wand and like gave it to me to hold with my wedding dress because I had like a tool kind of deal at the bottom. That's how much the wizard was like.
Speaker 3:This explains this explains a lot actually. It's really like now. Now the people are really starting to come together. You know, between the roller skating and now this, I was terrified of the flying monkeys.
Speaker 4:I used to have nightmares about the flying monkeys until I was like I don't know too late.
Speaker 1:Hey, clint, clint, I have a serious question answer. Tell me the truth how sick of you are. Uh are, how sick of everyone associating kansas with the wizard of oz argue at this point in your life, yeah sorry, I lived in la for 13 years, right, okay, it was a normal thing.
Speaker 2:I'd go like, yeah, sure, sure, maybe not yeah, yeah, let's, let's we'll talk about jayhawk in a little bit.
Speaker 3:Let's that, that's a little more of mine, right. All right.
Speaker 4:So back to your question. Seriously, though, I am genuinely and genuinely excited, from both personal level to professional level, to be here. You guys know how passionate I am about food and health. I was telling Clint I realized this morning that it was six years ago that I first learned about kind of that brain gut barrier, and I learned about the impact that glyphosate and chemicals really have on us. I knew it, but that was an epiphany for me.
Speaker 4:I listened to an episode on Rich Roll of Zach Bush, and from that moment it just really shifted my thinking, and it just it always really upset me that our industry was somehow so bifurcated. Healthcare was so bifurcated from the reality of the fact that we're trying to treat all the stuff that starts in the ground and yet we have such a broken system and it's bankrupting us in many ways, and so I never thought I'd see the day that I got to do this, and so I'm super excited, and so normally I would introduce our guest or Dave or Justin, but in your case you just have a really cool story about your family, why you're here, why this farm is here, on a personal level, and I could never give that justice.
Speaker 2:So I'd love it if you could jump in. By the way, the microbiome stomach, so 25 years ago actually, is where this really started.
Speaker 4:I know it took me that long, so yeah, yeah, doctors like take the on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, anyway. So yeah, I mean one thanks for being here came a long ways to sit here in a really dirty facility brace back memories of my youth, so um, yeah. So farming family, both sides, three generations, and I grew up doing that and I did move away. So when I was little I think by the time I was eight years old I was driving to California the harvest, and so he got through that and I actually didn't want to be in farming. So I moved to LA, spent 13 years there, but my dad came down to Parkinson's. I ended up moving back here and over time decided hey, I think that's coming from some of the things we're doing on the farms. He was on farms all the time. That's how it started. I thought I was by farm chemicals. One thing led to another over the last 16 years and now I'm sitting here with a bunch of the law robots. So I'm talking about health care, but these things are directly attached.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:Can you share a little bit about some of the things you did between the time you left farming and to the time you came back, because I think it's really fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because I see a lot of the parallels now. I got into the internet early on in 1997. And so you could see that it was super duper early at that point, right, like, websites were still like a big deal today and that kind of stuff. And so did that, ended up working, becoming an executive at Sony multiple times different divisions, sony Pictures, sony Music, sony Corporate and sort of became a I would say back then, a leading data scientist on how to do marketing, so connected call centers with e-commerce systems, with the latest things and different things, and so really pioneered that launch, the Sony e-reader, which we should have won, but Sony got in Sony's way and, as companies are prone to do, and so Amazon won. And so, yeah, I had a lot of time doing startups. So that was kind of what I did in LA and then, like I was mentioning, I teamed back and decided, you know, because of teamed back, and decided you know because of my dad, and decided, hey, what can I do to solve this problem? Right, uh, with chemicals, right that are causing disease and causing problems, it's just too much. It's too much. And I knew this stuff about the microbiome in the soil and in your gut, uh, be very similar, and so I knew enough to be dangerous, and then, foolishly, thought I could do something about it. And, uh, and so set on that course, and so I grew a hundred different vegetables for 10 years, my hand, wow. So at one point I was tending to my very first year out of the gate because I I'm just nuts tomatoes alone. I had 1,400 tomato plants that was grown by themselves, and we had 60 days over 100 degrees that summer, and I thought that'll never happen again. And then we had the same thing the next summer, and I was out in it all day, every day, oh man. And so, anyways, grew all these different things, distributed what we grew into grocery stores, helped create a hydroponic facility, employed one of the disabled young folks and got them deals into grocery stores, and did all that.
Speaker 2:Anyways, after trying to do it organically, I became a believer in regenerative farming because of its ability to sequester carbon. A lot of organic farming is tilled, and so it releases the carbon into the atmosphere, and so I have concerns about climate change, and so the issue with regenerative ag, though, is chemicals. So if you're not tilling, what are you going to do? So now you have to spray with chemicals. So hence Greenfield. I realized it wasn't scalable chemicals, the big equipment that's out there, can't do the things we do, so that's that's how I got here. You know, heck of a heck of a thing that's.
Speaker 1:That's, that's really cool. So when justin and I did a little, did some prep today, we um looked at some of the material, looked at some of your watch, some of your videos. Um, I was going to ask you and I think you you just answered it there, but I I'm kind of slow so I need you to dumb it down for me a little bit with the we we I get, I get um what makes food clean, but the regenerative part regenerative part I'm a little hazy on yep, yep, and there's a lot of different ways that people practice it.
Speaker 2:But I think when we talk about agriculture, broad acre agriculture, what does that mean? That means 250 million acres in the united states, right, so just to give you a comparison, when we talk about, like, growing lettuce in the united states outdoors, and tens of thousands of acres, and so we, we were obviously going to work with those traps as well, um, but right now we've been doing a lot of broad acre.
Speaker 2:A lot of chemicals, especially herbicides, are very common, and so, um, what broad acre yeah, so broad acre means big fields, okay, basically, and just huge acres, 90 million soybeans, coal market, and so what we're doing here is, um, we were focused on that, and so regenerative ag in the broad acre setting means you're not tilling, okay, actually. Second thing is uh, a lot of crop rotation nice, so he's not calling, you know injecting some other things. I I normally just somewhere between five and 10.
Speaker 4:And why is that important?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you raise the same crop every year, the bugs will find you, disease will find you, the soil gets depleted and you know it's just like why don't you eat broccoli and only broccoli? Right, it's really healthy. Now it just doesn't work like that way for us or for nature, and so you have to rotate what's going on. So if you walk out in a pasture that's just sort of been the way it's always been you're going to see 30, 50, whatever species, things naturally growing, because it's balancing out, just like when we eat, a wide variety of things. Yeah, under off, yeah, yeah. So that's the first thing, no-till. Second thing is grow a lot of different crops. And the third thing is you grow what's called cover crops. When you're not growing something that you're going to put in a grain bin, or lichens, whatever, um, you grow something called a cover crop, and so what that's doing is you'll put anywhere from 1 to 20 species in there and those are growing and they're helping feed the soil microbes turning it from dirt to soil.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, so, uh, and so this is just a whole process. And, at the end of the day, what are you doing? Basically, regenerative ag saying this we're not going to give synthetic chemicals to the plants to feed them, we're going to let the soil microbes feed them and we're going to feed the soil microbes. That's what you do. That's the big difference. And so all these techniques do that right yeah, so I don't, I don't think you're crazy anymore about my desire to eat the way I eat.
Speaker 4:Oh, let's not, we still think you're crazy.
Speaker 2:Let's not that's not even close.
Speaker 3:Let's not go that flat yeah, this doesn't this isn't a get out of jail free time no, is there any old things to talk? About here. Oh man, uh, we could clint. We could spend three years just talking about ellen's uh random food habits of you know, it's just random times like random. A whole new episode like random cravings, and yeah, it's's a whole episode on this. Yes, it is.
Speaker 2:Anyone who spends more than like a few days with me will tell you that they've heard me talk about sauerkraut way too much. Since I was Fermentation. You know and.
Speaker 3:Yeah, huge sauerkraut.
Speaker 4:Sam.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:All right fine, so I don't get out of jail free. So I tried.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, but you're getting some street cred, I mean a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we won't lead on too much onto that, because we can't let it go to your head.
Speaker 1:All right, all right, that's fair, this is true.
Speaker 3:No, so we jumped into this, but I actually want to step back and just I really want to get to know, or have you?
Speaker 2:tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself. So, um, can you tell us something that might be a little unexpected about you, you know, for our listeners? Yeah, um, I think that, um, one thing I didn't expect to do, but I took a boxing uh in my 20s kind of late time to do it. Uh, now, I didn't, I didn't fight professionally. Um, I have pretty bad eyes, so this is trying not to get it too many times in the head, and when we say boxing I'm more of a like same here somebody gets me and I'm just going crazy. You know that guy, but right I don't even like oh, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:I don't care, I'm just flailing, but um, but I did. Uh, I did. Yeah, I did train under a heck of a trainer a lot better and I got really good shape, although I will tell you this, uh, I was actually in better shape when I was raising all those vegetables than when I was training boxing, for you know, three, four days and I, you know, could do 20 rounds 30 seconds off, right and at peak, and it was actually harder raising vegetables, yeah.
Speaker 4:My husband would love.
Speaker 1:Ties it back to vegetables.
Speaker 4:My husband loves nothing more than manual labor, Like he is an attorney, but he is so happy when he's. He's like have this whole side project in our yard right now and he's in heaven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean honestly, I'm not raising very much now and I'm certainly not raising things well Since I started the robot thing. The garden is super pathetic and it's just discouraging.
Speaker 1:Don't cut. We've got to cut this part out.
Speaker 3:We don't oh okay.
Speaker 4:So Justin.
Speaker 2:I'm sure You've got that farm strength so that's good, and then I'm sure, so, justin, you've got that farm strength. So that's good, I did.
Speaker 3:And then I started robotics Technology, See I know, but I also realized that I said something a little offensive at the beginning because I initially thought you were a Jayhawk, but then I went through again I realized you're a wildcat, yeah. So can you tell me about your football, your passion for football? I mean, I'm a huge basketball fan, that's where I went, so anyway, but can you share a little bit more about your football obsession?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if we're going to talk about teams that don't cheat like mine, K-State.
Speaker 2:Oh, that place is on actual moral code. That's Kansas State and University. We wear the purple and, yes, we were led by the great Bill Snyder, one of the greatest coaches ever, which inspired me, by the way to. He took a team that hadn't won a game, I think in several years everyone wanted to give him a job. He went to the worst program in college football history, 1989. So I'm telling you this because this is a huge problem we're all trying to solve, but one of the ways I had confidence that you could solve anything was watching Bill Snyder come into the worst program in history and 10 years later he number one ranked.
Speaker 4:Well, I think part of what you just said was 10 years later, and I think that's half. Our problem in health care is that those that are willing to invest, they don't realize the time it takes to truly nurture something that's right and increase something legit. So, um, we seem the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah absolutely, so yeah, absolutely all right.
Speaker 4:So my last question is I have a huge travel bug and I also love to hike.
Speaker 1:Hold on a second Hold on Time.
Speaker 4:Oh, did you want to go to the footnote?
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, it just it. Every guest we have. Oh, thank you, so do I, so you can talk about all this.
Speaker 4:That's not my fault, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not my fault, it's not. It's not my fault, but I think you're, I think you're, I think you're looking for guests with travel. No, I am not this must be a quality.
Speaker 4:Well, there is an ulterior motive all right, I'm attracted to, but yes, I I will allow it, so maybe don't give me such a hard time dave, when I travel, see, maybe see, it's like more of a thing.
Speaker 2:Well, I was surprised when you're like I'm just gonna come out there and shoot this. Don't give me such a hard time, dave. When I travel, see, maybe it's more of a thing people love. Well, I'm surprised when you're like I'm just going to come out there and shoot this.
Speaker 4:Oh, I am here, man.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, Clint, this is not travel. Sorry, sorry, no offense. No, this is a day trip.
Speaker 3:She'll be there and back. It's a day trip.
Speaker 4:I'm not going back, it's just in my own defense, so tell us. I'm not going back until tomorrow. I'm here for the night.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, I know it's still a day trip. You're on the ground for 12 hours.
Speaker 4:Dave was pretty appalled this morning when he realized I was still at my house.
Speaker 1:I was like what if the plane's delayed? Uh-oh, Oops, Got delayed didn't it?
Speaker 4:I know?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Anyway. So tell us We've traveled, like where have you been? Where do you want to go? What do you like to do?
Speaker 2:Oh man, I mean, I love to travel. My favorite places in the US is Florida, anyway, all right. Where in.
Speaker 4:Florida, near Tampa. So, justin, you have a place.
Speaker 1:All right, I get on that one.
Speaker 3:I have a place? Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:You said Longboat Key right.
Speaker 3:Did you say Longboat?
Speaker 2:Key. Oh my gosh, I thought he said Longboat Key. I do not want to, I did, but I'm trying not to share that. Because it's going to be like mysterious. Oh, where do you go? Tampa, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:We're at around that area. I've actually been to Longboat Key. I tell everybody I meet you should go to Longboat Key.
Speaker 2:It was 10 years ago, but I can't recommend it anymore. I know I get it.
Speaker 1:It's really just frustrating.
Speaker 4:It's so crowded. Now it's gone, so Justin lives in Sarasota, gangs and such.
Speaker 3:And my head, and I firmly believe that Siesta.
Speaker 1:Creek Beach. You don't want to go out at night in Longboat Key. No, no no.
Speaker 4:Or the day.
Speaker 3:That New Pass area is very dangerous. It's no, yes, stay away, stay away.
Speaker 4:How about internationally Any place?
Speaker 2:You know, I spent a fair amount of time in Europe just one trip, and I'd done pretty well when I was young and so I went, and I think my favorite place is Interlochen, switzerland.
Speaker 4:Really, what about it?
Speaker 2:This is gorgeous. I mean, when you go up the whatever that canyon is and you've got waterfalls, you're like what Is this? Like this, what is it, someone? It's like a technicolor, right, how can this be real? Plus, you're riding a scooter, nobody else is on a car, that's just great. And rode up where the cattle and cowbells.
Speaker 4:Oh, so, yeah, so yeah. See, I always have to tell a travel story. You'll love this. So we went to see the tour france in person, and I can't take us to paris to do that. We have to go somewhere remote where you're going to see a climb and you're going to see it descend, and so it's like a whole challenge for me to like find some obscure place where we could rent a little airbnb and like walk down to see. It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there wasn't even a town, so we rented this little house. I'll never forget it. We're standing out on the porch and my husband was like, listen to the church bells we had there at night. And he's like, do you hear all those church bells? I'm like I wonder if there's like something that's going to happen. And then, all of a sudden, I said no, those are cows.
Speaker 1:It's Sunday, people are going to church.
Speaker 4:I was like those are cowbells, those are cows. And then in the morning we were eating breakfast and all of a sudden my mom jumps up and she goes running out. She's like there's cows, there's cows. And the neighbor was walking the cows down the street in front of the house. He takes them for walks to graze them, oh sure, and they were dairy cows for cheese and it was like a huge cheese area rotation grazing yes, it was it was, yeah, regenerative cows.
Speaker 2:We actually built robots that moved sheep around do you rotational?
Speaker 4:by the way, I get to see the sheep and I get to see the robots in action, but I will not be riding the robot so why don't you introduce your robots behind you?
Speaker 1:I mean, what? Those are them right? Yeah are they. Are they named?
Speaker 2:uh, it's a terrible. We just call them. We bought. No, but listen, I tried to name. The first few years I had a name for every robot we made I figured that would be. Yeah, that's where my marketing guy and the engineers made me stop. Now they just have numbers.
Speaker 1:Oh, do you like cattle?
Speaker 2:okay, well, yeah it's like oh, this is 24. Oh, that tells a great story, thanks and they won't want to, you know because I had them named after ex-presidents and you know, yeah, depending on the problems they were exhibiting.
Speaker 4:This will be immortalized. Everyone will know that you did that. Yeah, yes, I think they're very cool, okay.
Speaker 1:So, glenn, um, we're going to ask you the question that we ask all our guests what do you think can affect real change in healthcare? All kinds, yeah, but first, before you answer that, a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 5:It's pretty simple we're three friends who love working together. We're like a special ops team of healthcare and we stay true to our mission and to ourselves.
Speaker 3:Seven years ago, we decided that we wanted to form our own firm. We wanted to do our own thing. We were passionate about delivering it together, and we've been very successful.
Speaker 1:So we started BP2 because we wanted to get our hands dirty and affect real change not lose sight of people and be really proud of the work we do.
Speaker 3:We're BP2. Brown, pavlik Politi. We get our hands dirty, we do the work. We are passionate about delivering for our clients.
Speaker 5:We are the reverse mullet of healthcare A little party in the front, plenty of business in the back.
Speaker 1:Okay, Clint, back to you. What do you think can affect real change in healthcare?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know from a perspective what I can affect real change in healthcare. Yeah, I think, uh, you know from a perspective, what I can affect um, is to one, get the chemicals out of your food. Right, it's, it's creating inflammation, and that there's like a few ways we do that. Herbicides get rid of those. That's what these bots do pretty well. Right now.
Speaker 2:You don't get rid of all of them, but the next one is coming out next year, all of them. And then you got the insecticides, you get the fungicides, and those things start getting taken care of by when you have regenerative practices, which is what our robots are designed to help with, right, and so the healthier the plants, the healthier the microbiome, you get rid of those things. So that's that's it. We get rid of those chemicals. But we also since I was more on this kind of stuff and I have have an investment for Chippewa is we are, you know, we're looking into can we start working with specialty crops as well, you know, in California and Oregon and stuff like that. So to me, that's my role, and so if we get those chemicals down and we help people build the soil, you naturally end up with much more nutrient dense food and it tastes better so that.
Speaker 1:So that was um one of the questions that we had when we were watching the videos earlier, justin and I, when we were prepping um the, the pests and the pesticides. So I think I get it now. The regenerative piece of it with the soil causes these pests to to leave, is that is that? I mean, I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but they're basically they don't know what crop's going to be there. They disappear. Some different crop, yeah, yeah like I'm.
Speaker 3:I was thinking like you know, I've had this I have to spray neem oil on my uh lemon tree, right, in order for it to like. But so in my mind I'm trying to think of, right, how do the robots address kind of that issue? So, but it sounds like to dave's point. It's, it's the soil, that's you know, that's helping that, or it's the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, the better your soil is, um, the higher the bricks level becomes if you're plant, and the higher the bricks level, the sugar levels. Um, what they're saying now is you can get above 11 and 13 on your bricks level. You actually, insects can't eat, can't eat it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it makes them sick funny, funny, isn't it how this the same thing would apply to humans, isn't it? But yet we don't talk about that like crazy like you literally you guys, your, your mind was blown when we did that episode with carter and he was explaining that some produce is not nutritionally dense in his face and nutritionally void, and you guys were like what so?
Speaker 2:yeah, that set off a panic, something up. So, yeah, yeah, when I was like I wouldn't do the eating zaps, and there was, oh, david justin, so actually yeah, rabbit holes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah I. I crawled up into a corner and was in the fetal position, because I'm like now I can't trust anything and I have no idea what. So I think I might have been better off. But that's just me.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm going back to something, so I don't know what else to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's depressing so, uh, listen, no, I I basically I'm not saying that, oh, if you farm regeneratively, you do all these things just right, like all problems go away and you'll never need to apply the oil and you'll never need to do these things. Of course not, um, but you can make a lot of progress and reduce it, and I've seen it here on my farm and and I you know, and there's certainly guys that are practitioners of that, guys like john k that are teaching people how to do that.
Speaker 1:So let's Hold on. That's okay. You just said on my farm. So you use these robots on your own farm as well as use them for other farmers? Yeah, is that right?
Speaker 2:Okay, oh yeah. Nothing that we do isn't tested on my phone first ever and I'm at the farm yep, yeah, helen's at the farm, I'm not secret r&d facility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know. Okay, that's great. Yeah, no, it's uh. Yeah, we test everything here and and that is honestly, we've never had a market problem in terms of farmers. When you work with us is because I'm a farmer and so everything I do yeah, that's great. I understand. I say, hey, this is the way this works, this way working operation, and then I never make a crazy ask because farming is about risk management currently.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah so so, man, I going to ask a question about chemicals. I think a lot of folks and I appreciate you going way back on this, but I it's really important that this is a concept that is not real prevalent in healthcare, and I'm sure there are going to be plenty of people that listen to this episode that know some of this, but I'm I am really hopeful that we can bring education to a lot of people that don't. So let's talk for a minute about chemicals. You know I mentioned glyphosate. I mentioned that piece. I don't think a lot of people understand A what glyphosate is. I was in a word that they probably couldn't spell or say, but what it is, the names that people will recognize with it and what it does to, not just to us, but also to the dirt, the earth, that kind of thing. If you don't know, now, this isn't I have to. Ok, this is my warning. If you don't want to end up like Justin in the fetal position, scared of what you're eating, then you should fast forward this.
Speaker 3:Go on.
Speaker 4:Fast forward to this section, but hang on.
Speaker 1:But hang on, tune into another channel for a little while g-l-y-p-h-o-s-a-t-e yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:Okay, so clint yeah, and I think let me start this off with saying there, there are hosts to chemicals out there. Yeah, right, and glyphosate um is the one we all talk about probably the most, because it's the most prevalent, and there are certainly ones that if you ingested would straight up kill you on the spot and that are sprayed on fields which is just terrifying yikes.
Speaker 2:So glyphosate is probably not one of those. Okay, he would. Obviously we understand what I have to call in term. And it wasn't. Um, what happened with glyphosate was someone developed it. They actually won, I believe, in the week prize, yep, and it's actually got. It's also registered as an animal, yeah, which is just crazy, oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And so what it does is it's a systemic herbicide.
Speaker 2:You spray it on something and it goes into the plant, goes down to the rigs, so it would kill pretty much all weeds, right, and so it was very effective tool and that's what allowed no till farming to come into be.
Speaker 2:And so the interesting thing about it is, when we talk about carbon and we have these concerns and I know that's not what we're talking about here today no till farming, regenerative ag, can solve the carbon problem, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:And so if we didn't have no-till farming, if we hadn't had glyphosate, we wouldn't be going right. But then there's all these negatives, because now we're just spraying it all the time, and glyphosate is one of maybe five to 10 different chemicals you need to spray in your concoction it's just the most prevalent and frankly, frankly, this barely works right, and so friends of mine were like we need to ban it. I'm like, well, the ones behind it works, and so what we're doing? So the the goal with creamfield is, of course, to eliminate the needs using nature to be of these type of things, but glyphosate, um, it's gotten to the point prevalence that their organic farms have found. If there are someone's telling me the other day that they got something 18 foot in the air and capturing rainwater and there's life-saving rainwater and it also doesn't come out of the soil like it is.
Speaker 4:It will be in our earth and soil basically for eternity. We, we don't, I mean I would say I don't think so I don't, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I think nature reco't say turn it. I don't think so, I don't think so.
Speaker 4:I think nature recovers, it's just a matter of if nature just outlasts us. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We can recover. Yeah, I think it'll be okay on that front. I really do. Nature finds a way to deal with it and we'll get there. So I don't think we've lost some terrestrial we can't go back from. Yeah.
Speaker 4:But it's an awful lot. Well, it's interesting because I mean I I mentioned zach and I mean you know he has this, this really matter of fact, you know, sort of laissez-faire attitude where he's like we're getting really close to the tipping point where we might we might not be able to go back, uh, in terms of what the destination we are doing to our earth, um and and. But what's what's great about it is it's like hey, if we're there and now is our chance, and and I have to say I was pretty destitute about it. And then, once I got into this group with carter and this, this farm tank group, I'm like, hey, man, there's, there's some really good stuff happening.
Speaker 2:It's not all destitution no, that's a great group and I think and that's how we met. But the uh regenerative ag movement is amazing and it gives me a lot of reason for helping. So and again, we build robots to make that scale without clinics Right, and so a lot of other problems get solved by regenerative ag makes a massive change and you can watch nature heal itself very quickly. You know, I'm not saying you can get rid of life's thing all the rest of the day, but yeah, it's just which.
Speaker 4:And then not. I think what's really important for the those people on the health care side that are listening and the business side, is then we actually start to heal people. Yes, because if as a society we're we're not at large, ingesting, you know, live food, right, because it's not life, but the whole foods that we eat are on the edges of the grocery store. They're not the processed thing. So, and those are the things that are our bio, our microbiome, our gut, our bodies need the most, because there's so much kind of dead, ultra processed food out there that when that supply gets restored right, then that really changes the game in terms of people's health.
Speaker 4:To your point, you brought up inflammation. I mean, when we talk about cardiometabolic disease, when we talk about cancer, so many of all the cognitive decline that you know, diseases that we talked about, I mean almost every single one of them points back to inflammation and this chronic inflammation, obesity, um, insulin resistance, all of it. I know I'm jumbling a lot of things together, but it all points back to inflammation, chronic inflammation, and uh, and yet again, all we're doing is mainly and a lot of this is because of people, but we're just prescribing pills, and so to talk about the food source that could really heal people just from the ground up, literally, you know is is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:So and you know, I think it's very important to call this out right the, the companies that make these chemicals, people that go to work there, mean well, and they're wanting to make sure we raise enough food and yeah, and it's coming from a good place, right, and so it's just too much and so it's time to have that change. And I think everyone agrees with that and I think most people that are doing that agree. You know, in that world too, yeah, yeah, so I think the timing's good. You know, 20 years ago, no one would agree with that state.
Speaker 2:Uh, when I started on this journey 15 years ago here in cheney kansas, basically people were like thought I was nuts, I'm sure, and uh, and then about five years into it, like I'd go to the grocery store and little old ladies would like come up to me and be like I'm really glad you're doing what you're doing, and I'm like, okay, I don't know why you're whispering, but you know. And then yeah, and yeah, right and so, and now it's just, people are like every, every farmer we talked to, uh, literally out of 80 we talked to earlier this year, 72 said yeah, we'd like to do rain, it's happening. I've been to work with, since because they're starting to realize there's something that harkinson's and I'm not saying glyphosate houses parkinson's, there are other ones that don't help, and so, um, you know, everyone's seeing the problem. Now it's coming home to us, right?
Speaker 4:a friend of mine growing up. Yeah, I grew up in a in florida, but I grew up in central florida um, surrounded by ferns and ferneries, ferneries.
Speaker 1:I thought you said infirmary.
Speaker 2:I thought I'd done a lot of things, but I've never heard of a fernary.
Speaker 4:When you buy flowers.
Speaker 1:Is it where they grow ferns?
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, we're not talking about no crop? Probably Tell us about the fernary. I've never heard of a fernary.
Speaker 1:Really, I'm going to hand on this but, tell us about the when you buy.
Speaker 3:I've never heard of a fern. You really this is.
Speaker 4:I'm so proud of myself that I brought new knowledge to all of you today in the agricultural world. So when you buy a flower arrangement, there's fern pieces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I've seen you know it's like kind of the basis, yeah.
Speaker 4:And so I grew up in a part of Florida where ferns grew well now, with a lot of water, but you know, still you had ferns.
Speaker 1:So there's a whole fernary industry that produces the ferns for the flower places that stick a flat end out of the flower, yeah.
Speaker 4:And I lived really close to fernaries and then also citrus crops. So there were a lot of families in my town that they were. You know, they basically survived on fern and on citrus and her father died of a metastasized cancer, but just a really aggressive, and he was super healthy person and it's very obvious that it had to do with chemical exposure. He was always out on the land, always around and I mean ferns are a very chemically intensive crop if you call it a crop Sure, so yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it's crazy how, throughout the whole country, everywhere, that you're dealing with cancer clusters as a result of these chemicals, yep, right, and for how long afterwards too? You mean, like the farm goes away and then you put a house there and you're still dealing with these chemicals, like years and years later. So you know, I guess I'm going to move us, because I'm going to go back to my concerns, so I'm not again in a fetal position. You know obsessing about things, but tell me something positive around how we improve nutrient density, right, like I mean at scale.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, listen, I mean few things you know. Fewer chemicals you use, the better the microbes microbial community is going to rebuild itself in the soil over time. There are some ways, some things you can apply to sort of jump start that a little bit faster. And this is nothing new guys have been doing a long time. It's just on the edge of becoming mainstream. You know, I don't know when that part comes across that, but it's far more. And so when you do that, you reduce the chemicals. So that's one.
Speaker 2:And, of course, when you're not tilling, um, you're not sort of destroying the soil structure that allows that to happen. Right where you have some sort of you know, the, you're not taking the wrecking ball through housing development, right, gotcha, you want those microbes to kind of be able to cling to the roots. You want to cling to or be next to, to serve the other microbes and so um. So these are the ways, and so regenerative ag does all these things. When and when you get rid of the chemical, you create the conditions where they they thrive, much like eating sauerkraut and all the different things that you can eat to create that in your own stomach, right In your own digestive system, and so it's literally very similar, right.
Speaker 4:It's a, a it's another.
Speaker 2:It is the natural form of a pill yeah, yeah, and, like I said, when I was 25, I had some stomach issues and I was super stressed and had a startup then and and wasn't handling it very well and, um, I'm still going, but uh, um but, that's history.
Speaker 2:But uh, you know, and the doctor was like I would take this pill and take that. Now I'm not yep. And that's when I started researching and I actually got co-founder to come. It's great. And now I was like you know, and I grew up eating kind of balanced meals and stuff like that. My parents were great, we was in a garden, you know our own cast at times and stuff like that. But uh, it really. That was when I it became obvious to me and I saw I went to a restaurant. I am in San Francisco, I'm still at Nyman Ranch and they're telling me the story about Nyman Ranch. This was a fairly new thing to me back then and I'm like it's 25 years ago and I'm like you know, we'll farm.
Speaker 1:Maybe someday I'll give you something right, here we are, yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 2:So maybe, maybe just sort of for a punch line, if you could sort of contrast that old way of farming, original farming, compared to what greenfield does and how greenfield fits into it yeah, yeah, um, the way farming has been done for a long time, um was we tilled the soil, we took it, we rifted up, we turned it over, we did all these things right and we would use some chemicals after we planted it. And you and the green revolution was about that we could drive down costs by supplying nitrogen using a favorite bosh method. So we would take and we would start putting chemical fertilizers to feed those crops. Okay, and so the microbes got replaced with chemicals to no longer have a job now. So we would replace it with mind bangs or synthetics. Yeah, and yeah, you can grow amazing working plants. You may have disease problems, you may have.
Speaker 1:Yeah so I like the miracle grow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I don't, I don't, you know, I'll never use that one, but uh, it's um, it's so. That's what happened and of course it looked great. Yields shot out, everything went great. So we were in a world at that point that, uh and I think carter is more of an expert on this, but it's um, you know, we were worried about calories and feeding people, right, and we were worried about people starving and that kind of stuff. That's where we came from. Well, we don't have a problem, and if we do, it's purely political problem. And so now we're like, okay, but we lost all the quality. So we have tons of quantity, not quality, and the regenerative movement's about doesn't cost you more and over time it costs you less.
Speaker 2:Actually, as a farmer, to do this. You get all the bad things out and you up the quality right and you work with nature to harness the microbial systems, cover crops, all the things I've talked about, reintegrating animals into your cropland, and you end up with a superior product. Um, given not like a ton of time, I mean, you start seeing progress pretty quick, and so you know it never ends Right. It's like everything else. You keep improving and learning and going backwards and forwards to it, and that's the difference.
Speaker 2:Again, we're not taking something that we created as humans to feed plants. We're harnessing the microbes in the soil, letting them feed themselves or recolonize to feed the plants. Now we may do some things to help that happen again, but that is the fundamental difference is you're saying I'm going to let nature take its course, I'm going to, as a farmer, obviously you can't grow crops just going well, we'll see what comes up and try to harvest it. You still have to have a plan. You still have to, hence your robot, right, so you still have concept of weeds, you still have all these things, and so these robots make that work really more efficiently, and so that's a good yeah, no till in the world.
Speaker 2:There, literally, is no one like us yeah, so there's a good segue and dave and justin have so much.
Speaker 4:See, I was on a plane and and the two of them, like they had all saying so, with that as a segue, let's go on ahead and let's cue the robots.
Speaker 3:Let's see what.
Speaker 1:Let's see them in action yeah, so, um, earlier today, justin and I uh watched these, watched some of the videos and recorded our reaction, so I'll have clint walk us through what's going on here.
Speaker 2:Cool thanks there you go. Yeah, so these are, uh, robots. Basically, in this case, it's not food, it's cotton, and so we're running at night and we're cutting weeds. Between the thought, in this field we actually saved they were going to have real issues even harvesting. You could see the white cotton there at the end, and so this was an interesting field, because we actually used the cotton bowls, created some algorithms literally our CTO overnight to figure out where the plants were, to make sure we didn't hit them, and we ran it the next at nine.
Speaker 3:So is there like an air traffic controller that's looking at everything, like looking at everything to make sure, like I saw the drone?
Speaker 1:We saw the drone. We saw video of a drone. So is the drone up there while they're working or is it a pre? No, that'd be really cool.
Speaker 2:But no, we do use drones to sort of map the field right or do some of that and then use machine vision from there and a lot of stuff. But the way those robots are being, they're basically just being monitored and no one's there anymore. That video is from last year. This year nobody's there. So we literally have this year we have interns 16 to 18 years old that are keeping an eye on they're babysitting yeah these are they like they're like the roombo vacuum you know you turn it on and they know where to go.
Speaker 1:And they go out and within two centimeters do do roomists know where to go? Because, that's not been like my parents, just they know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:They don't get the things and understand it.
Speaker 1:They don't get the things.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's so much you don't understand around algorithms and now I'm like, you know what I make robots and I have a pretty good understanding of these. I think they're supposed to learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't learn so well. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:They're not real good, but no, it's pretty interesting. I mean, they're able to basically keep an eye on themselves. And of course I told these young interns like we're going to try to make you an ATAG repairman by the end of this year. You know where, we don't even need you. And of course they don't tell them the tag I'm old and I just walk away defeated most of the time.
Speaker 4:But it's so, that's you know but yeah, I mean they're getting it's coming on. So tell us what the robot I mean. What does that do?
Speaker 2:on the field. So when we started it, we basically have this theory. You have this chemical resistance right To I was mentioned. Yeah, used to be killed everything. Now it does, and you're using more and more chemicals, and what happens is they fail. And so there's a weed called a pigweed. It gets over a foot tall. There's nothing you can kill it with that won't kill the top as well, and so even with GMOs. And so we said all right, let's solve that problem first.
Speaker 4:Which is crazy, Like let's solve a problem that nobody's been able to solve.
Speaker 2:Right and I called my buddies PhD but just cut it. What happens? No one knew. You know, he's brilliant, and so I, for two years I'm hiring people. You know, at this point people have watched me growing vegetables and being out in these hundred degree heats and then they're like this guy's nuts.
Speaker 2:So, and then you know, so I'm out there cutting weeds in the middle I see they'll be on, mowing them over, letting them grow on purpose, and uh, and I realized, yeah, you cut them and they do come back, but only once or twice, really. Yeah, and so, and now we don't like haircuts and now we've run thousands of acres. Yeah, well, the deal is, if you, if you cut over 50 the leaves off, the the whole thing's sort of closed and that's done right, it's like mowing your lawn too low. Yeah, yeah, it'll come back. It takes a scalpel, yeah, yep, yeah, so, uh, so we did that. Now we run thousands of acres, and so that's the first thing we did Is mouth Cut, ns Cut. Yeah, we're on the lens.
Speaker 2:Sorry, see, there's a difference. Yeah, so now we're in between these things and we have spinning blades and we can run with a really high precision like no one else would gotcha, because if you're off, we cut the crop we're trying to protect. Exactly the other thing we can do is we have tanks, water tanks on them, so we can run along and say, hey, I want to add sea kelp, I love sea kelp on my vegetables. You'll spray it, um, just does a lot of wonderful things, and so you can run along and just spray the crop and not anything else. So you're reducing your water by at least half of a big spray rig and these are electric, right? Yeah, yep, so big spray rig because it has to use so much water, you have to use so much nutrient or chemical or anything. So just on that basis alone, just because you're small and we only touch the thing we want to touch, we actually win and remember the small, very simple.
Speaker 4:Those of you listening remember it's a small statue machine, so it's 24 inches wide yeah, so, um, so that's the next thing.
Speaker 2:Now we have something in development where we can sense. We hope we'll find out. We've been told this works. We can sense the plant as we go by what needs the nutrients it needs, which is no, we haven't proven it, but we're testing it. Yeah, now that's like mind blown yeah, so we'll see. We're still. We're still training the model, but apparently it's been run on canvas for two years. We didn't do this, yeah I can't think who's doing it and uh and so yeah.
Speaker 2:So justin, there's so much going on right now right so yeah, so then we could say okay, one robot says what do we need, and then the next robot goes here, it is it's remarkable, like it's, it's literally.
Speaker 4:It's like I think of that movie, wally, which was so disturbing and yet here we are. But but it was just. You know there was a lot about it that was you could be disturbed by. But what's so great is that, like you've created the wally of it's fixing, it brought its toes to the society.
Speaker 2:It's like seeing its own demise I was gonna say, I mean, is it gonna be too late and end up, yeah, anyways, yeah so so this is, this is outstanding yeah, okay, and, by the way, we have a new machine coming next year. It's been testing four years. Um, that will. Right now, we don't eliminate all the herbicides for you, we don't, okay. Um, but that's coming, that's coming. Yeah, you bet. Stay tuned. Yeah, I'm not gonna quit until we get that done.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I mean, you have a great mission and I and I love that. So, which is why I had to come to the farm is when you, you have a passion for this, that it's like you could do it. You know so. Okay, so we've talked about the possibilities, potential, right? Obviously there are challenges, or else we wouldn't be sitting in a farm with these behind us, right, like it would just be over. They would be everywhere, we'd be good, we'd all be healthy. So what? What are the challenges that you face?
Speaker 2:I mean, of course, you got the technical challenges to pull this stuff off and that, but we've got just a crazy good team and so we we've managed to pull it off. I think it's taken longer than it should have and, uh, and the the primary honest, honestly, we can do pretty much all of this. The challenge has been fundraisers and it, which I had no idea, and I've been through this before. Yeah, that was in your background, yeah, so it. I've just been shocked how hard it's been to raise money for this thing and yeah, so that, frankly, is the only thing that slows us down.
Speaker 4:Which is just crazy. And why do you think it's a challenge?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know why we're in Kansas Interesting. But the thing is, if I'm not in Kansas, if I'm not in the Midwest or the South where all this stuff's happening, then you're not going to know what you're doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. But what does that mean? Venture capitalists just don't. They're not paying attention to America.
Speaker 2:They literally don't want to even have to make the effort, like you did, to fly here. Oh, okay, it's mind boggling. And so when you fly one fire for states, when it's yeah, when it's hardware and it's all these things, and then they don't understand farming. And we've kind of gotten to the point with venture capitalists that we're like you know what I don't have time to explain farming to you so you can get on a plane or we're done talking interesting, right, and so both. Fortunately, we have, you know, family offices and we have kind of angels investors and of course, chipotle came in and we have some other major companies, you know, backing this more strategic capital. Okay, and so that that has been a blessing and it's been fantastic and so, um, but that really that coastal bias, what I would call lazy venture capitalists yeah, well, so let's slow it down.
Speaker 4:so I'll ask you this um, so this is kind of interesting. You know I always say it's a love-hate relationship in health care with, with equity, with, you know, yeah, and with investors, and you know there's a lot of finger pointing and negativity that gets thrown around and I feel like you have to look at it from both angles. There's a lot we wouldn't have done in healthcare if we didn't have venture capital and private equity. But I always go back to I think so many things fail in healthcare because we look at it with expectation multiple, as expectations that are not realistic for something that's more infrastructure, do you? Is that something you face, or is it literally just more of the coastal bias, like, do you know what I'm saying? You know, in healthcare it's a 10 year thing, it takes time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so there is, you know, and yeah, I think, look, if I'm someone and I'm a venture capitalist right now, what kinds of things do I con? Right, I can do some sort of crazy deep science type stuff, spacex, or something like that. Okay, that's great. That's a certain thing. We're not quite that, although some things we do are pretty interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we saw some Starlink. I saw some Starlink.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. And so I think the but other than that you're looking at software. Well, you make software and you put it online and you distribute it a million, a zillion times, and all of us are SaaS innovators. So here you know, early guys found this. We were all around that back 20 years ago when it was actually innovated, yes and so. But the problem is, you can make it and you can just sell X amount and you can make your exit Exactly, if you're a venture capitalist, you're looking at it, do that in five to 10 years, which and which is your route.
Speaker 2:You know, and with us you go well, five years in. Of course, tech is three and a half, probably even properly financed, but we, you know, a 10 year run on this. It's going to be a 10 year run at least to get to some sort of major exit they'd like to see, and I understand all that. But I will say this who else is able to do what we can do? There's no, anybody can do SASass. Like there's a ton of ag tech sass companies got funded. If I, tomorrow, woke up and decided I wanted to compete with any one of them, in three months I'd be online. They'd be in big trouble, just like apple computer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you enter something you're in trouble yeah, yeah, right now, and so we could do that. I'm saying we're going to, but we could, and so it's just. Uh, it's the nature of the b short-term finance, which is exactly what you're saying. Same thing you're facing from a healthcare perspective.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and unfortunately, what it does in healthcare, which always breaks my heart, and it's why this kind of this new little, you know, underground movement that you and I met through, of moving from a sick care system to a healthcare system, a delivery system building I think it's this. Let's find the people that aren't fixated on the quick exit, but they're fixated on knowing that they're doing the right thing and they know that it does make financial sense. Because we've all been in the business long enough, we understand the economics of this. We're not doing something dumb, we're not just doing a thesis here. We know it will yield all the savings, um, but it's just hard because you do need the. You do need the capital.
Speaker 4:Um and and I think, but again the secret sauce gets lost. And I'm just so over that in healthcare I there've been so many great things that have put out there, but then the minute that series a or series b comes in with the big, the big check, the scale, the, the timing of the scaling that's associated and tacked on with that check, right, it's crazy, it it's not realistic. And see, then all of a sudden you take this business model that was, was beautiful, and you, just you, you strip out what made it special and um, yeah, and you're kind of relying on, relying on the greater fool theory.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, oh, here's just saying let's just talk it into somebody paying too much exactly, exactly, it's happening a lot actually with provider practices.
Speaker 4:You know I'm amazed at and it's it's changing a lot, right. I mean we know that that. That that the the market is very different now. The funding scene I mean carter's put some good stuff out there like it's significant. I mean I think he it was a five-year low in terms of, you know, new funding and things like that. So I mean it's it certainly and I think things like this are still really interesting. You know, it's a, but it's just it's a transition.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's why people are always like, oh, you have robots, it must be easy, it's money, yeah.
Speaker 4:I have robots and I'm on a farm and it's not me.
Speaker 2:But I get where they're coming from too, you know. But yeah, listen, there is an interesting thing here to me and I am seeing this in the discussions we're in and in my own life and things people shared in that group. We're in the card of leads is this 1997? Sat in a room with capital records and they said we control the music, we'll do what we need to do when we want to do. 1999, our first day at sounding music, napsters there, uh-huh napster. And yes, the music industry has never been the same.
Speaker 4:No, that's correct. It took a disruptor it.
Speaker 2:Well, what it takes is people saying screw it, I'm gonna solve this myself. And that's what you had. People come up peer-to-peer this, peer-to-peer that same thing right now. Right, I'm doing the self-testing, I'm doing this. I just went and said, doc, my one mar on my blood sugar. Oh, we seem fine.
Speaker 4:Nope right, I did the same thing. I did in 90 days. I did a 90 day cgm myself and so I think there's a.
Speaker 2:There's going to be more and more of that going on and, um, it is obviously the group we're in. It seems like some of you guys, what you're doing. I'm like, oh hell, I I'm like behind, you know, I'm like yeah, well then I get on the farm, take sides.
Speaker 1:I'm like I mean hey, we've got a big, we've got a big fancy podcast, so top that uh, you gotta well dave.
Speaker 4:You even admitted the one group that we're referencing, one of the two I had to silence that yeah, he had to silence it, but I, I, but I have to say like, in all seriousness, it is the, the most I've pushed myself intellectually and strategically in probably 25, maybe even my entire career. Yeah, and I absolutely love the. I know you guys are making fun of me. I say this stimulation, the intellectual stimulation that that group provides, that kind of the provocation that's involved there where and it's not there's no A, there's no transactional expectation in the conversation. There's very little ego involved in the conversation and it is everyone's in it for the same reason. And also there's no, there's no rules.
Speaker 4:It's like just throw this idea out there, well, but okay, what if this? And you're like wait grocery as a health care provider with a farm and most people say no. But this goes back to your point. It's, it's going to be something like that. Yeah, I mean, it's going to. We are the. We aren't going to get away from sick care unless we just create an alternative right right.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, the music industry still exists, but it's a completely different thing. So he just bought huge catalogs. So they're basically a catalog, but they're not deciding who likes it and who doesn't anymore exactly so we always ask our guests what their buy a world of Coke moment would be.
Speaker 3:We're not going to break into song, don't worry. Well, we've done it too many times. Definitely no, not even. We'll just go with it. So what would be your buy the world a Coke moment?
Speaker 2:I think it's to. I think no one likes subsidies right now, but farming is heavily subsidized, heavily. There are very little farms that would make it without the subsidies. We're talking about broad acre, like I mentioned early on, so I do broad acre ag. I've also grown vegetables locally. I've created my own CSA. I've distributed into 25 grocery stores, 35 restaurants. I've actually done empty-lead people's doorsteps, farmer's markets.
Speaker 2:It all started where I started Greenfield. There's no subsidy for that. There's no subsidy for that. Locally grown produce, the locally grown grain that then is turned into a locally grew, local flour that's mine, just in time turned into flour and then it's turned into bread with no preservatives, right, and so we don't have any subsidies for that and I I can't think of a better way right now to do that. Now I have a solution over here that can drive down the cost of producing things the right way. Not going to be able to scale it overnight, all the different things, right, but in the interim we need better quality food and people that can raise it on a local basis, right.
Speaker 4:We need accessibility of it and for it not to be cost prohibitive the way that it is today. Yeah, you know I'm the crazy one spending all money to get the organic which I don't even want organic. I want to get it from the local regenerative farm, right. Right, which is where aaron and fresh rx comes in oklahoma. Right, like she's creating a model to do that and um, but to your point, like it's still cost prohibitive for the farmer, for the scale, short-term cost Exactly, yeah, cost that people are paying attention to Yep.
Speaker 2:And so, look, the robots are going to help that a lot. And you know, we can help people raise more effectively, not just broadacre. We can get in specialty and we can do it. You know, I already think it through and I've mentioned it to Aaron. I think I can get him a robot, but it's one of the some harm to test with. But I think that, um, I would do that first because I think that's the fastest way to say hey, you.
Speaker 2:So I have a farmer named shelby, she. She worked here, she worked for jaco farms and she worked with me for several years and, um, she learned probably more from me, but she's also learned what not to do at times. But, um, but she's gone on to create her own two green houses, growing out boars, got her own sheep and I go buy her produce all the time, right and so. But it's not easy for her. I know what she's doing, I know the numbers, it's very hard, yeah, it's very hard, yeah, and so we need to change it. Like I'm not saying she needs to be wealthy great, you know growing these things but but she doesn't need to be disincentivized. No, and it makes it so easy for me, like, oh great, you know growing these things, but she doesn't need to be disincentivized. No, and it makes it so easy for me, like, oh great, you know, because I'm hardly growing a garden and it's for a Tehutani, so I just could buy your stuff.
Speaker 4:I'm too busy with my robots.
Speaker 2:And I'm okay with overpaying for that. But most people are not, yeah, when I say overpaying she has no choice.
Speaker 4:It's a charge, way more than you're going to get right. But and again, it's not that people that are educated, they're willing to to pay the price, but for so many people that is truly cost prohibitive. Yeah, and then you add that to the lack of knowledge for the majority of people that it is going to cost them their health in the long run. But they don't. Nobody's ever taught them that, nobody, you know. Nor do a lot of people even know how to cook healthy. And then we look at our traditional sick care system and it's built upon, you know, a pharmaceutical industry. I mean Bayer, monsanto. I mean that is farming, that is pharma. It's terrifying, right when you, when you think about the lines that that crosses, um, but you know it is what it is, so we fix it right yeah, how do we get it into costco?
Speaker 3:that's my question, right? So, in other words, like the experience, like the nutritional density, like all of that component, so that what I'm saying, like I hear you I shop at both the farmer's market right, locally, right, and again I got concerned because I'm like I don't know, after talking, like I hope everything is being, you know, farmed appropriately, but I'm not sure. But that's the point being is like it's like round food, yeah, this nutrient-dense food into Costco, right, or Walmart, you know what I mean. Like how is that? How do we get there?
Speaker 4:Maybe there's not an answer. Maybe we don't ever get there, maybe it's meeting people where they are, I think. So may I take a liberty of saying, justin, is it meeting people where they are is an alternative to just using big box distribution? I mean, I understand that you're asking a direct question about big box distribution, but I think part of this, too, is like-.
Speaker 3:Well, how people yeah, how people shop Like people are being hit with such high prices right now inflation, other components they're going to Costco right In droves. So if that's the environment that we're in, how do we get nutrient-dense food into that area and let Costco help drive down the cost? I mean, I don't know. I mean I don't have the answer, but that's where people are going because of cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've thought about this a lot, and at Costco you probably could make it work. I think one of the challenges of the physical retail store store is this take in product, don't sell enough, it goes to waste, drives up costs, right, don't have it marketed properly, don't have it set up properly, don't you know? And when I distributed in grocery stores, what I saw was crazy amount of waste, not so, and sort of. The management of it was subpar, terrible action, and so I went holy cow, this is not even a valid distribution method for what we do, right, and so the thing I think about daily is this how many packages a week do you get from amazon? How?
Speaker 3:many days in the week are there right? I know my amazon driver's name by heart, you know so.
Speaker 2:So just take the instance of bread. If you knew you could get preservative free bread that was milled the edge town baked you could get it. You knew it was going to go bad in a week but it was absolutely conservative free and it had all the fats and oils so it tasted amazing and it was great for you. And you knew that was coming every monday and amazon incented it to to kind of come with the other things you're ordering, Right. So I think there's this model, this distribution. It's already happening. We're just putting them in boxes right now, but it's already happening, and so I think that might be a way that this happens. But it takes a change in mindset of where kind of things are loaded up and how they're distributed.
Speaker 3:I get my millet bread yeah, I get my millet bread from Amazon versus, you know, Costco.
Speaker 2:Local dairy, local whatever, uber, whoever. No one's done this yet, but I think that that is where it's at right. If we're going to, if we want to have fresh local syrup, you can't drive 20 different places. We're not Europe. Yeah, it's just not going to happen for us that way.
Speaker 4:I don't think right, and so, or a combo of the two meaning like there's a, there's a centralized place where this is brought, yeah, that people can go to. I don't not going to say it's a costco, but it's a place. It's affordable, yeah, right to people. Um, they understand the value of getting it To your point. There's stuff that can be delivered to your doorstep, but then there's also a place where this is aggregated and there's actually a guy doing that.
Speaker 2:And he's actually an investor in this. He's trying to write a name for the company Wagon. He's in about 20 cities. He's trying to do it, but it has to become a thing, but the key is the convenience Because. But it has to become a thing, and the key is the convenience, because that's what you're saying about Costco. It's not easy. No, it's super easy, it's on your doorstep and the loyalty yeah.
Speaker 4:So if you could leave a legacy in health care, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's obvious, it's the focus I've had getting chemicals out of farming. So that's my place. That's been the mission for going on 16 years now and, uh, robots being, uh, you know, the the final version of that. So that's really. I think my role in this is to make production, get the chemicals out and then make it lower cost to raise the strike, which is you've done that, for me is an easy one well, I just like to mark the state of history that I got to ask that question on our healthcare industry podcast.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is the first time you've been up.
Speaker 4:And I wasn't just seen as like the complete quack. There'll be a lot of people that still think this is a little bit out there, but yeah, but yeah, so super much appreciate your time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, likewise, and that yeah, this has been great. And so, lady people, all the way out here Very enlightening, we can't either, but she's a traveler.
Speaker 4:I'm super grateful that I got to go on a farm field trip, so we can't wait to share this podcast with the healthcare industry at large. It's been outstanding, so thanks again.
Speaker 2:Thanks for your time. Thanks for having us. I'm Dave.
Speaker 3:Pavlich, and I'm Justin Politi. You're at partners at BP2 Health your best chance for real change. As you can tell, we can talk all day about health care. Drop us a line through our site, bp2healthcom.
Speaker 2:That's our way.