In this episode of the OnAire Podcast, we sit down with Feed & Grain Managing Editor Steven Kilger to talk about the biggest challenges facing the grain industry today — from combustible dust and labor shortages to automation, grain storage, and the future of agriculture.
Steven shares an inside look at how facilities are balancing increased production demands with safety and compliance concerns, why preventable dust explosions still happen, and where technology is slowly transforming the industry.
If you work in grain handling, feed manufacturing, agriculture, or industrial safety, this conversation offers practical insight into the real-world pressures operators face every day — and why proactive dust control matters more than ever.
Episode Transcript:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the OnAire podcast. We’re here in the studio. The mics are on, the lights are hot, we’re back. Episode 16, here we go. This time we are interviewing Steven Kilger, editor of Feed & Grain magazine.
Yeah, it is really cool, because, we talk about it with him, but we’re new to the industry, and being able to talk to somebody who writes the stuff that we read to learn about the industry is really neat. We’ve read plenty of his articles, so it was kind of nice to put a name to a face and everything.
Yeah, I love his fascination. He’s just so…what’s the word?
He’s a student. He’s eager to learn.
He is.
It’s really cool seeing somebody with that hunger. Because he didn’t want to be a grain writer growing up. And so, to get in to the industry, dig in, meet the people, learn how they talk, how they walk, the facilities, the processes…
He’s curious. That’s the word.
He is. High fact finder.
Yes, very high fact finder. It’s great to know that the people writing those articles are that way so that we can be that way through them.
Yeah, I thought they were just all AI robots honestly. The fact finder of all fact finders.
Yeah, some interesting information, some great insight into what’s going on in the feed and grain industry, and we’re excited to still be learning every day.
Yeah, it’s good to know that the people out there, especially covering the industry and writing about the good things and the bad things, are on the same page about…a lot of the challenges that we see and face are preventable. And also, like, “Here’s the good things we’re doing” and “These are the things that we should dig in on and push and challenge.” So, yeah, it was a great conversation.
I’m excited for the industry. The industry is producing more and more and more every single day, every single year, with every crop. And so, that’s exciting to see. Especially what we’re doing here in America and how we’re feeding the world.
Yeah, it’s a good place to be when the problem is now, “How do we get better in the front end and the back end? We’re nailing the growing, we’re nailing the processing. But, like, we could feed the world if we could just figure out how to get there. So, that’s an exciting place to be.
Alright, stick around. Here we go.
Hey, Steven, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Hey, thanks for having me guys. It’s really weird being on this side of things, but it’s a fun experience.
Yeah. Usually, you’re the one asking all the questions.
Yeah. I don’t know how to not ask questions. I might have questions for you guys while we’re here.
Send it. Yeah. Love it. So, this is great. This is good that we’re getting the chance to sit down and talk with yet another expert from the food and grain industry. So, if you don’t already know, Steven is the managing editor at Feed & Grain magazine. And so, that’s been a great resource for us whenever we want to know what’s going on. Because we are kind of removed from that industry in the sense that we’re new and we’re trying to get our foot in the door and we’re trying to help facilities all across the country and the world, but we are rookies. And so, we’re not in it every day. And so, we don’t know what’s going on. So, we rely on you to give us a pulse of what’s going on in that industry.
Yeah. I mean, I always flinch at the term expert, even though I’ve been covering the industry for 13 years now, I think, mainly because when I became a journalist, I always was like, “Oh, what do I want to do?” Right? Like what do I want to do with my life? And for a while I was like, “Oh, I’ll be a literature professor or something like that. That’s what I’ll do.” And then got into the publishing and the reporting side. And the reason I did it is because…this is going to sound weird to a lot of people, but like, I always really liked like the research and writing side of my student career. Like I liked writing papers. I know that’s a strange thing to do, but like I did. So, I basically picked a career where I’m going to stay a student. Cause that’s what my entire job is: talking to people, trying to figure out what’s going on in the industry, and how to best present that to a readership so that they can also know what’s going on in the industry without having to spend hours and hours searching like I do every day.
Yeah. That’s really interesting. Especially for two guys who use letters more for math than writing or anything else like that. So, hearing somebody that’s into that is just kind of polar opposite of who we are. So, I mean, zooming back even further than that, like what got you into writing and literature. I mean, were you like a, I read a lot as a kid. And is that what pushed you that way? Or was it just the newsy side, the journalism? What was it?
Well, so it’s weird. I mean, I think with a lot of people, I mean, I don’t know many people these days that like did what they wanted to do when they were a child, you know. I’m sure it’s out there. I’m sure it happens. But most people I think just kind of, you fall into what you end up doing really, and just find that you like it there and you’re okay with it. So, I started, for a while I was big into reading, big into writing. When I was younger for a long time, I’m like, this is what I’m good at. This is what I can do. This is what I should do. And so, I went for an English degree in college. Because, in my mind, you know, you like writing, you get an English degree, and then you, you know, become pretty much a teacher or you don’t work in the field, it’s pretty much the options.
And then I was even more, I’m like, oh, I’ll do literature, romantic literature from the, you know, 1890s. That’ll be, that’ll be a good profitable field. Sophomore year, though, I finally got my head out of my butt and decided like, Hey, maybe I want to make some money throughout my entire life. So, I got into, I started looking into the publishing side of things, switched my major over to book publishing and editing, then I finally got an internship at Feed & Grain. So, Feed & Grain, my like only adult job. So, they were nice enough. They took me in. They happened to lose somebody right as I was like at the end of that internship. So, there was suddenly a job opening for me. So, I went into that. I found that this industry is very welcoming, very kind. I’m from rural Wisconsin originally. Like, these are my people. I can talk to them. I can chat with them. They’re open. They’re honest with you. They will tell you if you’re giving them any crap, like they’re not afraid to let you know, they’re not afraid to be honest. So that always really attracted me. And then I started to realize that I could write about anything. And the part I enjoyed about writing more than actually putting words to paper was learning about whatever I’m writing about. So, I’ve just kind of kept doing that. And that’s kind of how I ended up here.
I love it. Yeah. You’re talking about that industry and that’s been our experience as well. We work in a lot of different industries and so we go to a lot of different trade shows, and each trade show and industry has its own little culture and kind of how it operates and sort of thing. But yeah, we both grew up in a more rural community here in North Carolina. And so, going to the GEAPS trade show and things like that are a lot of fun because you get to shake hands with real salt of the earth people that are the ones that actually do the work. And yeah, it’s pretty great.
Yeah. It’s like, I recognize these kinds of people. These are farmers, like different area, different style. Our area is not so good on like the straightforward honesty. We will beat around the bush and talk around it.
Yeah, we’ll sugarcoat it.
But, other than that, yeah, it is like a homegrown group of folks.
There’s literally dust on their boots when they walk into that.
Yeah. Oftentimes they could, sometimes they could dress up a little more. No, it’s the nice thing about GEAPS. Because even, I mean, in trade show culture in general, I think has gotten a lot more casual since the pandemic and stuff. Cause I remember, especially for another trade show we go to for the feed industry, IPPE. I don’t know if you guys have been there, but I was told like, this is much more formal. You should probably have a jacket on and a button up when I first started. And now I still try to dress up nicely for both shows. Cause you know, they’re for work, but I’m like, “Oh, I could probably get away with jeans today. Like I could get away with that.” And that’s nice. I think if you’re in the right industry, if you’re in an industry where you can go to a professional show in jeans, I think that’s just the right choice to make.
I love it. Yeah. I like the jeans and sport coat and kind of look and get away with that.
Yeah. Especially with them. It is definitely the vibes there.
Yeah. So, you just kind of fell into this industry then.
Yeah. Very much so.
The door opened and then you just kind of jumped right into it.
Yeah. It worked out. I mean, it’s B2B publishing what we do, which is a little different than normal publishing. It’s a little more of, if you want to go into the publishing world, it’s a lot more stable than in a lot of other regions in publishing. So, it was a steady job that I could do well. I didn’t have to move to New York or do anything like that to try to make it big. So, it all like worked out on that end. And then I just ended up realizing like, no, I can really like what I do. Like the industry is, I happen to end up liking it. You end up, it’s weird. Like you find yourself caring about whatever you have to immerse yourself in all the time. Right? So, at first, when I started this job, no idea what a grain elevator was. No idea what a feed mill it was. Saw those buildings on the side of the road, thought they’d probably be a good base if you had a zombie apocalypse things. You know, they’re giant and they’re concrete, so not a lot of entry points. So that’s good to know in the future, but like no idea. And now like you can’t help but go down the road and be like, “Oh, soybeans are a little weak here, a little dry. Must not be getting enough moisture.” And you kind of get into that mode of things. And you end up finding yourself really caring about this industry that you had an idea about beforehand.
Yeah. And I can relate to that because I had absolutely an aversion to airflow and fans and things like that when I was in engineering school, but after being here and working with the product and the people, I see how, what I believe are my God given gifts and skills and, the things I really like about engineering and people management and things like that, how it all comes together. And you’re like, “Oh, fans is just the conduit.”
Yeah, for sure. It is all about kind of merging like kind of your gifts with where you’re at and so yeah. Look, let me tell you something. I was not looking for a job in dust control. That’s for sure.
What, wasn’t your childhood dream? I wanted to be a zookeeper.
I was trying to be on that rocket ship that went around the moon the other day. So, but here I am.
Yeah. I want to be a truck driver, but here I am living my best life.
So, we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, you getting into the grain industry and what you’ve seen from there, but just kind of give us, what is, what’s the overview of the grain industry right now? What’s going on? What are the challenges? What are we seeing in these areas outside of that soybean field needs a little bit more tender love and care.
Well, yeah, we are tracking weather right now. We’re in planting season. So that’s a big one. Really our issue right now is unpredictability, right? Like no one knows what’s happening. Luckily, like most of the row crops and stuff where those are grown, most like fertilizer has been bought for this season, but like there’s parts of the country where that’s really not a guarantee. Same with like facility builds and stuff. Like it’s hard to make those invest in 20 million, 30 million, 200 million feed miller, 200 million soybean crush facility when you have no idea how much concrete’s going to be the next year. So like, that’s a big one. But hopefully all that gets, you know, worked out there. People working on that. Hopefully, this is a blip. The long-term ones are stuff like employment challenges, right? There’s hard to find people that kind of want to do this type of work, especially for where you tend to start out in these fields. Unless you went to school for it, you’re probably going to start out at the bottom of the ladder, which just means you’re going to have to put in a lot of physical labor, depending on where your feed mill or grain elevator is located. It’s probably going to be kind of hot and unpleasant work a lot of the time. It’s dusty, guys come in with the dust on their boots. It just is dusty work. And even when you move on from that to management, you’re going to have that. But it’s hard work. It’s, I think, a field that’s vastly overestimated by people that like you can grow in this field. Like this is one of the industries that you could get in and not have a college degree and you could get hired at a grain elevator and they will slowly promote you when they find you’re a hard worker, and you can like end up managing them and going on like, so like it’s there, but it’s really hard for us to draw in labor. So that’s why you see a lot of push for trying to reduce labor costs through technology and stuff like that. The other one is just kind of, grain markets in general, obviously like, where does this grain go? So, we want to keep growing more and more every year. We want to keep increasing our bushel yields, but we’re starting to run into issues where, well, Brazil also wants to do that. They want to compete with that market and they’re taking a lot of market share from, you know, China and Asian countries and a bunch of other things. So like, that’s a challenge. Personally, we make the best crops in the world. Like, that’s America. It does. We make the best corn, we make the best soybean in the world. We have the most efficient system at it, but we are fighting for that market share. There are other ways we’re trying to kind of get around that by, you know, increasing blends for biodiesel for soybeans, for example. Ethanol for corn, supplementing our gas, but like for long-term things, we kind of have to figure out how we can market what we can produce, which is quite frankly enough food to feed not only ourselves, but most of the world at this point. How do we get that into the hands of other countries who can’t grow that kind of thing, don’t have the land, don’t have the right climate for it?
And that’s kind of our big struggle. We’re going to keep growing more and more grain. Where do we get it? How do we store it for long enough? Obviously to keep it going where that kind of part in the chain goes. But, those are like the big ones that I can think of right now is in predictability in the market. We don’t really know. It’s hard to invest in capital. Hard to invest in the facilities you need right now, just because you don’t know where things are. And then you go into finding workers, finding the right employment, either that or updating your facility so it can run with less employers, which is like something you guys could do. I think that’s actually a big selling point of your product is like, Oh, this cuts down on the cleaning time you need for stuff, and that’s a huge labor sink. Like, if you’re cleaning your facility, right? That’s hours every day that’s taken out of your workload to clean up.
So, if we go back to the storage issue that you mentioned just a moment ago. So, one of the elevator operators that we’ve talked to back in the fall, he said, we’re putting grain on the ground. Like there’s nowhere to store the grain that’s coming in out of the harvest. Do you see that as a problem across the country, just storage capacity? And then is that the rub you’re talking about about building new facilities?
It is. So yeah, we’re just producing huge, huge crops every single year. Like this year, supposedly there’s, well, there is a big drought in the west. The Midwest is really soggy right now. But that’s probably like, it’s been like that for years and it hasn’t had that big of a, we’re really good at farming. We’re really good at producing grain. So, we keep producing more and more of it. We’re getting better at it. Hybrids are making it more possible. Crop quality is just making it more possible.
So, there’s just this huge influx every single year. And if we don’t have immediate markets to ship that out to you store it. Every storage has costs though. It has both the costs to run fans, to keep it cool. Even in the best conditions, you are going to get shrinkage from that. It’s going to weigh less and be less valuable at the end of it. You have bug infestation, rodent infestation, just tons of other costs. You’ve got to fumigate. So, ideally you, you know, your grain goes to a shuttle loader and it is immediately off to whatever market needs it, but that’s just not the way it works a lot of the times. Those markets take time. They want to buy when they want to buy. So, you end up with a situation where elevators have given this kind of choice of like, well, do we dump it on the ground here? Do we let farmers, you don’t really want a farmer or producer to dump it on the ground at a third place and then sell it to you later because while some have a lot of farm storage, it’s not their job to manage grain quality. Right? Like that’s not their full-time thing. So yes, they’ll lose more storing it onsite on a farm, whether in a ground or in a bin, then you would in a grain elevator who are managing and monitoring the aeration the entire time. And the way that people are kind of getting around it now is you’re seeing a big influx and more of what we would have once considered kind of temporary storage. So those are like those big tarps, ground piles, those things, but those are getting so much more advanced than they were even 10 years ago when I was in the industry. They now have, you know, you used to have to keep the fans on all the time to kind of keep the tarp down and you’d lose a lot of moisture that way. And so, you can see that they now have automatic fans that do the same kind of sensing. You see some of these new like hoop buildings and they actually seem nicer than grain bins a lot of the time. Because they’re these giant buildings with piles of grain, but you can walk above it on a catwalk and you can look down to see what you have and this, all this natural light from the clear tarp. So, like those are becoming a much more viable option. And you saw that for a while as people moved away from concrete silos to steel bins. And now we’re kind of going into even this less costly error storage. And I think that’s really where we’re going to make up this gap of piles on the ground. Cause you really, really just don’t want that. That’s bad for the grain. You’re going to sell it for less, and it’s exposed to everything.
And so is that where you see a lot of the, let’s call it technology or innovation in the industry, going into things like that? Because from our standpoint, it’s an industry that’s very slow to adopt any new technology, new product, new anything they’ve been, you know, doing the same thing kind of the same way for a hundred years. So, it’s always been working.
Yeah, one of the reasons like on our own podcast, I love to talk to technology people and stuff. Cause it is an industry that’s really slow to adopt sometimes. I mean, they’re farmers, a lot of them at heart, you know, they keep it going. It’s still got some life into it. You just got to smack her the right way on the side and it’ll start up again and you’ll be fine. Why are we getting a new pellet mill?
And so, a lot of any new technology’s job is to kind of sell itself. Like, why is it valuable to the industry? And even then it’s going to be a struggle. So yeah, a lot of stuff like grain bin monitoring, aeration that’s been big with technology automation, AI, it all kind of gets rolled up into one right now. There’s been this weird dream since I’ve been in the industry of a, you know, a lights off facility, a facility where you don’t have to have anybody there. And you know, a truck driver can drive up to the kiosk and get their ticket. It’ll unload for them. They can drive off in a route. It’s still not there. It’s been a dream for a long time. People say it might with AI. I’m not a hundred percent sure of that, but we’ll see. So, and even when it is there, like you said, they’re pretty slow to adopt. So, it’s going to be another 20 years before it’s common across the industry, even if we could do it. And so yeah, a lot of that kind of automation technology that’s going into where we can save grain, where we can aerate grain, it’s the main thing that they do. We’re also seeing some in like, lots of like transportation, accounting things, stuff that you would have thought was like standard, like you should be able to email a PDF of a ticket to a driver rather than have to like staple the receipt, mail it in the mail. That has taken a really long time to dock, but we’re starting to see a lot more of, finally starting to see people actually have everything on an app now where you can scroll through and get all your payments and stuff that way. But yeah, it’s kind of an interesting thing where, if you look at where the industry is right now, it’s probably where other industries were 10 years ago and probably be where they are, but we’re just kind of slow. We’re cautious to take on the uptake. I mean, people still need to eat, and the system we have works really well. I think it’s really important that people like you, people like me continue to beat the drum that like, Oh, it’s better to get in front of these problems before they happen, right? It’s better to not need those employees before you’re at the point where you can’t find them anymore and you have to limit shifts or whatever. You know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. And so, it is that thing like, no, this will be better for you. This will be better for the industry. And I want as many grain elevators and companies to stay in business as possible, and sometimes that involves investing in technology that has an upfront cost that you don’t want to spend, but will help you in the long run.
You guys are at least the head of the IRS. Unfortunately, I had to talk to them recently. No email. Could not, you have to fax them.
Oh my goodness.
I had no idea.
That’s wild. So, like on that similar note, I purchased something today, actually. And the person was like, Oh, our printer’s down. I can’t get this gift receipt for you or whatever. They’re like, but don’t worry. It’s in your email. And I was like, okay, I’m ready to give you my email whenever you’re ready. And they’re like, no, no, no. It’s already sent. I’m like, I didn’t give you my information. What are you talking about? And sure enough, I opened it up, and I had it in my email. Because somehow it was linked to my card and it zapped it back and forth. And I was like, that’s kind of terrifying. That was very convenient, but terrifying.
But anyways, so we’ve been talking about technology. We’re kind of in that category and trying to push those areas, but we’re focused on dust, obviously, and dust has all kinds of connotations in the grain world. It’s kind of the hidden but known evil out there. So, what are you seeing in grain facilities as it relates to dust control? What’s working? What’s not working? What are the operators missing on? What are you seeing?
And what’s the attitude around dust in the industry as well?
The industry tends to be pretty anti-regulation at least. And when it comes to dust control, obviously everyone knows dust control is best practice, they should be cleaning after every shift. It’s weird how different older mills are versus a newer feed mill or an older elevator versus a newer elevator. And where you’re located. But you get this situation where…Have you guys ever been to a mill that’s had a renovation? And so, they have half of the old mill on one side, and then they have their new stuff on the other side. And you walk in, and you can see like the night and day difference between the dust control of just the two sides. So, it’s like, mill design, dust control in general has improved a great deal over the last 20 years, 30 years, who knows exactly how long. But it is still a struggle. And it’s a struggle in a lot of part because people don’t have the staff to do it, right? We’d all love to spend two hours cleaning every day. We’d love to sweep up. And like, you guys do great because you eliminate this problem. But like getting up into the nooks and crannies where that two inch of dust can easily accumulate over the course of a few weeks and months, that’s a big operation in a mill. It is not easy to get up there. It is not easy to clean any of that stuff. It involves like huge expenditure of man hours. And really that’s like the big thing. That’s the big conflict, I think, in dust control in the industry right now, is the need to expend man hours versus the need to get it done. Because no one wants a dust explosion at the end of the day. No one wants that, but it happens still. It still happens multiple times every single year, people die from it.
And your reasoning of like, well, you’re just kind of busy. Like we didn’t have time. We kind of let it slack. We didn’t have the logs done. It’s not really an excuse at the end of day when OSHA comes and they’re like, well, what happened here? And they realize you hadn’t, you know, done a deep clean at your facility, or you hadn’t in months and months and you let everything accumulate. Especially feed mills where there’s like equipment that’s constantly moving and running. Grain elevators, you have more of an issue with unloading and loading of trucks. We’ve all seen the big bag filter things that you can get. I first remember them outside of my woods class, but you know, they’re there. There’s big industrial vacuums with filters. And those work fine for those applications where it’s hooked up, right? To control dust, they help. But when it comes to just the like constant cleaning and maintenance that a facility needs, we’re just running out of the people to be able to do that on a day to day.
Yeah. You were talking about the events that happened every year. I think it was yesterday. It was on the Feed & Grain website, and probably an article you wrote, about the Purdue explosion in Eastern North Carolina, not too, too far from us here, and saw that they’re deciding just to demolish the whole facility. Aside from the injuries and the loss of life, let’s just talk about just the building and the facility. They’ve lost the whole facility, and they’re having to like shuffle production to other places in the area just to keep going. Because chickens still got to eat.
Yeah. And we do, too.
Yeah. I mean, you see the images after a dust explosion, they’re terrible. It’s a huge amount of force. And a lot of these, there’s another one that happened this year. I don’t remember who. I shouldn’t say a company name if I don’t remember it exactly, but they had this explosion. They ended up needing to tear down, too. And they had recently just like invested in upgrades and stuff. So, they had built on, they invested millions of dollars into this facility to renovate it and upgrade it just to have a dust explosion basically wipe out all of that progress. When I talk about, you know, that ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, it’s that, right? That seems like an easy thing to skip at the time, but then if something actually does happen, it can end up just costing you so much in your business, so much.
We talk about all the time, where it’s like, yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s so much better than the alternative. And I mean, we’re on the prevention side, and that’s always the tough sell. It’s like, well, you’re not even going to fix the problem today. And I’m like, yes, but you are saving on your labor. That’s what you’ve been talking about so much recently, just like getting the people to do it. Our buddy in the grain industry, he was like, I’m lucky to get somebody with a pulse. He’s like, let alone somebody that wants to come up here and clean.
And he’s going to actively clean when they’re not busy doing something else, right? They’re not going to just go into the control room and hang out. No, like those people, it’s hard to find. It’s not fair to ask managers to constantly be hounding your employees to have to clean and stuff. It’s their job, but like, it’s not fun. And then if you go to the south, it’s also a contamination issue, a lot of dust stuff. We talk about the explosions, and it gets the most, but I mean, African swine fever, how does that transfer? It transfers on dust between facilities.
Whoa.
Like, yeah, there’s stuff about having your wheels washed and stuff after you ever go because that’s how that stuff travels. Like same with most diseases. And if you’re in the south or a place with humidity, leaving that dust on the ground or on your machines, you start to get that like filmy gunk that’s impossible to remove completely. And then that just holds bacteria. It’s perfect food for like…I was talking to a pest control person about this. We live in like rodents’ and bugs’ ideal, like we work in their ideal environment. It’s a ton of very easily accessible food, just everywhere with lots of nooks and crannies to hide in. So, we forget that that dust is food particles. So, it also sustains those creatures, helps them live. So, there’s just all these like little things that you don’t even think about when it comes to how we clean our facilities and how we control dust that is a lot more than just, Oh, there might be a dust explosion, too.
SonicAire pest control. It’s going on the website. Let’s go.
I don’t know if I want to get into that one. Like, that’s my favorite area to delve into.
I love researching it. I’m like, huh, we’re doing rat birth control now? Okay. That’s interesting.
I was at the GEAPS expo about 10 or 12 years ago when they started talking about that. We had a lot of jokes. Yeah. More and more now, you find it all over the place. It’s another interesting thing about working in the industry, is you get to kind of see that as it goes by. From the first announced brand new thing, and then it slowly, slowly, slowly, sometimes frustratingly slowly, becomes standard across the industry.
That’s us. We’re still in that “frustratingly slowly” part.
It is frustrating, I know. I mean, our industry is what it is. I love them. They’re great people. They’re kind. If you ever get a chance to talk to them, they’re open and honest and will talk to you for all day, but they’re also like, they’re not going to give you a ton of feedback. They’re not going to be like…try sending out a survey to grain elevator managers and getting them to respond. It’s really hard to do. So, half of the struggle of covering the industry and half of the struggle for companies like you is just like, what do these guys want? How can they market to them that they actually listened to me and want to do this? Yeah, it’s a challenge. One we know very well.
Yeah. Betsie’s behind the camera crying. She’s in marketing and she’s like, she gets it. Yeah.
Yeah. When you send out, you know, 20,000 surveys and you get 20 back and you’re like, you guys couldn’t have helped more with this?
Thumbs up. I want the smiley face button pressed. Please.
But you know, it’s part of their charm. At least these podcasts aren’t getting a ton of hateful comments under them or anything like that. People listen to them and then they move on. There’s some industries where you can’t say anything without having a million people jump down your throat. So that’s nice at least. But yeah, some feedback would be nice. It could help.
Yeah, anybody out there. Anybody listening?
So, where do you see the industry going? Where’s it going next? Where’s technology going to take it? Slowly, very slowly.
Very slowly, we’ll move into it. There’s going to be a lot of like efficiency gains from LLMs, AI, that kind of thing. Especially on the backend, you know, accounting, logistics, traceability, that kind of stuff is really designed for that. Feed formulations, if you’re in the feed industry. I don’t think we’re going to go away from a people-oriented business though. There’s just too much physical labor involved. There’s too much thinking you actually have to do on the job to problem solve things. But that’s going to cut down a lot on labor. I could see the industry in the future eventually being like rotating staff. So, you have a bunch of people in an area, and most of what you can do, you can manage on your phone. And then you have, you know, engineers or maintenance people go from facility to facility to clean up or make sure stuff’s working. I could see that easily happening within the next 10, 20 years. And then, other than that, it’s all going to be about where these commodities go. So, can we keep increasing ethanol blends? Can we keep increasing biodiesel blends? Probably not. I know there’s some people in the corn industry that’ll get really mad at me for saying that, but ultimately like, we’re using less fuel than we used to. People are having more efficient cars. There’s just less of a reason to blend. Also there’s been a lot of pushback against the industry for a bunch of reasons, some of them very, very unfair. I think personally like, fuel security in our own country is good. And even though ethanol still might produce, you know, emissions and stuff like that. And I’m always a big proponent of like, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. So, it’s better than a lot of alternatives, and it keeps us secure. So, I think it’ll stick around, but I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be around forever. It was never really meant to be, it was always meant to be kind of a stopgap. So that’s, you know, 50% of the corn market right now, 40, 50%. I don’t have that exact number. People out there, you can yell at me, email me later, but it’s a huge percent of the market that’s buying up domestic usage of corn. That’s, you know, good for now. Won’t be here forever. We need to figure that out. We need to figure out how we can trade grains more efficiently around the world. Because like I said, we can feed everybody, we’ve just got to get it to them. Like there’s no reason that American grains can’t feed huge chunks of Africa and Asia and all these other countries. It’s just about getting over that stuff.
I think genetic engineering is going to really start really entering a new phase, especially with AI use. I think we’re going to get better crop varieties than we’ve ever gotten before. They’re going to be able to do a lot more things than the first kind of Roundup-resistant strains and stuff that went out the first wave. Like the new wave of new, more nutritionally-sound products, more resistant to drought, heartier products with bigger yields. I think those are all on their way, and they’re coming. They’re doing like really cool research with wheat and stuff in, I don’t know, like Oklahoma and things like that, where you’re like, Oh, this grain is not only better for all these other reasons, but also it just has a vitamin that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Or it doesn’t have gluten in it, so you can the wheat taste of bread without any gluten in it.
Let’s go.
The industry is slow to embrace technology, but it is embracing it. It will. I think we’re doing so much with updating logistics with transportation and how that’s tracked and how that’s monitored. It’s so much more traceable than it was 10 years ago. You can now follow your barge as it moves down the river and know exactly where it is and exactly what it’s doing and you can track them all. Same with your rail car shipments. Same with your trucking shipments, like all that’s there. And I think like, ultimately as we embrace this technology, no matter how slow it is, it will give a lot of advantages to our industry, and we’ll be able to do more with less, which is ultimately what we have to do just because of the demographics in rural America right now.
Love it. Especially if we’re, uh, talking about those facilities that don’t have a lot of staff there all the time, they’re going to rotate around. You probably should think about automating your housekeeping. So, we can help.
We can do that.
Well, yeah. Because I mean, when I first saw your product, I was relatively new to the industry. It was probably 10 years ago, and you guys weren’t doing a ton of marketing towards the industry yet. So, I always thought it was a really cool thing. Because the idea of getting rid of dust or controlling dust before it even really flies into the air? That just makes sense to me, especially in giant cavernous buildings with a bunch of pipes and conveying equipment that just goes up into the ceiling. Like, what are you going to do? You’ve got to get a guy in a scissor lift up there to wipe it down, or like hit it with a broom until it all falls on their head and kicks up dust everywhere? Like, oh, that sounds like a terrible idea. So, whenever I see a solution like yours, I’m like, oh, this just makes sense to me. I’m obviously not the one buying it or anything like that, but I’m like, this just seems like a no-brainer to me. Why wouldn’t you do this? Why wouldn’t you save the man hours? Why wouldn’t you keep your facility clean?
Especially because the part of my job I hate the most, and that I have to do, is every time I have to report on someone dying, on some kind of tragedy, someone getting hurt. I don’t like writing those things. I do write them, in part because I think it’s crucial as we are so busy and we’re so overstretched and we’re trying to do so much, it’s so easy to let those little things slip. It’s so easy to just like, Oh, we’ll do it tomorrow. Do it next week. Whatever. And the fact that that can lead to a tragedy is something that everyone has…because no one wants to make that call. Everyone should be considering that in their head. No one wants to have to call the wife of an employee and tell her that he’s not coming home that night. Like no one wants to do that. No one wants to explain that to their community. No one wants to explain that to families. No one wants to explain that to the government. And every single dust explosion, every single grain entrapment, it might be inconvenient to do, but they are all preventable accidents. They do not have to happen. And it is negligent to say that they do, or to be like, that these are unavoidable things. Because they are; they just take work to avoid.
And I think it is important that you continue to write those articles and post that information because if not, those folks are just dying in vain. So, at a minimum, I hope we can learn from that and try to make a better path forward.
Yeah. And it’s amazing to me, a lot of this conversation we’ve been talking about, like we’re really good at the producing and manufacturing side of it. And so much so that we are dealing with issues of stretched manpower and being able to handle the logistics and storage of it. And so, it seems like we could say, let’s dial back a little bit and fix some of these issues. But no, our culture is go, go, go. And so, I mean, that’s where we feel like we fit a good spot of like, if this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to help you in the middle of it. We’re going to automate this thing so you can do these other things. But it is just kind of, it’s wild to think we’re overproducing and causing these issues at the same time.
Yeah. We move so much grain. Like, a staggering, unimaginable amount of grain. It’s insane to think how good agriculture has done from, geez, you know, 60 years ago when we thought our max population was going to end at like a billion people, you know, we wouldn’t be able to feed anymore, into today where we have, you know, 8 billion or whatever there is out there, and we’re expecting 10 by 2050. Like, we’ve done amazing things. And part of that is that drive of the industry to keep doing more, keep getting better. But it has to be balanced with the idea that like, we have to do it right. We have a responsibility to our employees and our communities to make sure to do it right and make sure everyone’s okay at the end.
Well, on that note, as we kind of wrap things up here, if somebody new is coming into the industry, a recent grad, or maybe it’s even a high school grad, and they’re getting their first job, they’re getting started in the industry. What’s some advice you would leave them with and say, Here you go.
Get involved in stuff. One of the things that I think as I get older and my time in the industry is longer, I see more and more people retire and go on to finish, do that. That’s great. But it also seems like the people that are in are less involved. They’re less active or less doing stuff. And you will only find benefits from being a part of associations, from talking to other people in your field, from learning that way. Not only like for your career, because the grain industry, the feed industries, they’re very incestuous groups. Like people move around, but they move around to like slightly different companies and you just, you see them. So like, it’s good for that part of it. Like you should always know people so you can go somewhere else if a job opens up or, you know, your facility closed down, whatever happens. So that would be a really big one, is to get involved in it. And then, this is a slightly selfish one, but also learn your industry. It’s very easy to be like, this is my day to day task, and so this is what I’m going to do. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more willing you are to learn and learn new things, the more you’ll advance in your career. And this is a career that you have an older industry. So, you have a lot of runway with promotions and moving up in the company going forward. If you put in the effort and you show you are hungry for that experience and for that knowledge and for that advancement.
Yeah. Like we’ve already talked about, it’s a very accepting industry. They’re hungry for new folks to get excited and come in and get involved. And it is, even in that small ground floor opportunity, it’s a piece of something bigger. There’s a whole lot more going on. It is the national food chain and even the international food chain that they’re helping contribute to.
Yeah. It’s definitely one of those easy ones for, I mean, if you’re going into this field and getting your start, it’s easy to see your impact. I am feeding the world through this.
Yeah. It may feel like you’re just pushing a broom, but it is. It’s important.
It is a good mention for when you are hiring people, when you are looking for talent. The generations coming up, they’re looking for an opportunity to advance and move in their career. They’re looking for an industry that means something. And feeding the world is a noble goal. It is a noble thing to do. So, as long as you’re taking care of your facilities and you’re treating your employees well, it should be an attractive field to younger people coming up. It really should. It’s all about marketing and how we push it.
That’s exactly right.
That’s awesome. Yeah. Well, hey, we really appreciate you. And we’re going to land this plane, but thank you so much for what you’re doing. Thank you for your commitment to the industry and how you cover it and getting the word out. It’s been a blast hanging out with you and covering what’s going on right now, and talking shop about the feed and grain world. But thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
Yeah. And where can people find you?
You can find my content at feedandgrain.com. I just finished our newsletter. I do that every day, so you can find that stuff. If you ever need to get in touch with me, you can email me anytime at skilger@wattglobal.com. Happy to hear from anyone in the industry who wants to talk about anything. Especially if you have problems, let me know what’s what you’re dealing with. What we should be covering. That’s always nice.
Love that. And your podcast?
My podcast is the Feed & Grain podcast. It’s not nearly as cleverly named as yours. But yeah, that is out there. You can find it on major podcasting platforms or the website.
Awesome. We’ll put a link up for it so you can like and subscribe and find Steven there. All right. That about does it.
Yeah.
Thanks for joining us. I’m Jordan.
And I’m Taylor.
All right. We’ll see you next time OnAire.