NORTH DAKOTA ( KXNET ) — For episode 21 of The Voice of the People podcast, Nicholas Quallich spoke with North Dakota Ag Commissioner Doug Goehring. The commissioner spoke about the current state of agriculture, the benefits of supporting local businesses, some of the ag industry’s biggest challenges right now, and more.

Here is a transcription of the podcast:

Quallich: Hello and thank you for joining us for the Voice of the People podcast here on KXNET.com. I’m Nicholas Quallich and today we’re talking about being made in North Dakota. And someone who knows all about that is our current Ag Commissioner, Doug Goehring. Commissioner, thanks for being here.

Doug Goehring: It’s great being here, Nicholas. Thanks for having me on.

Quallich: My pleasure. So, you’ve been commissioner since 2009 now. What’s it been like in that position for you?

Goehring: I generally say you’re living the dream and chasing the nightmare type of deal. I love the challenge. I love the culture of our state. I have my fingers in a lot of different things. So food and agriculture actually are only about 40, 45% of my portfolio. The rest is water, infrastructure, trade, tax equalization, oil and gas, banking, bonding, housing, state mill and elevator. It’s never boring around here. There’s always something going on. So, and then when you have a department that has well over 140 different programs, you’re always shifting gears and doing different things, it seems like. So, it’s been a pleasure. During COVID, it was a bit challenging, daunting. That challenge is one to the nth degree just simply because there’s still an expectation from the public, and rightfully so. But not everybody in government was showing up and putting their time in. So, we got a lot of calls and we had to deal with a lot of different issues that don’t even land in our department. So that was challenging.

Quallich: You said it takes up some of your time, but also, how often do you get back into the med lab?

Goehring: I don’t go to the lab anymore. I love it though. You know, it’s amazing in this business how much is tied to chemistry and microbiology, which I have a deep-found love and respect for. But I do get a chance to go sit on the tractor every so often. Other than that, my son’s kind of overseeing the operation. I go and get in the way. And he tells me what to do now when I go to the farm.

Quallich: And I should point out for our viewers, you are a licensed medical lab technician.
Correct?

Goehring: Correct.

Quallich: So, and just take us back. How did you get to that point in your life?

Goehring: Actually, I went back to school as an older-than-average student. I had my feet crushed early, probably in my 20s. And I worked construction for quite a while. And I worked at the edge end. And it was getting to be a bit challenging sitting in, doing water line and sitting in a hole all day. And pretty soon it was – I just went and found something else to do and get off my feet, or at least not be on them for 12, 13 hours a day in a water-filled hole. So that was just one of the things. But this was a nice segue into this. Who knows what the good Lord has planned for your life. So he kind of put me in that direction. I loved it. I got a chance to buy the family farm during that time, so I was farming and ranching and working the graveyard shift at the clinic. And pretty soon, the farm was just getting to a point that I had to dedicate a little more time, and then things kind of just blew up from there, I guess. Got involved in more local issues, some regional policy, and before you know it I get asked to run for ag commissioner so that’s kind of how I ended up here.

Quallich: You said a mouthful. You never know what kind of plans he has in place for you. Now you mentioned we talked about this being a segment about being North Dakota made and certainly by the looks of it you’re familiar with all kinds of products namely coming out of North Dakota being two big ones of course soybeans and sunflowers. So what’s the state of our agricultural situation right now in North Dakota?

Goehring: Well, it’s interesting because we’re unique compared to the states around us. We produce about 54 different commodities. We’re number one in the production of hard red spring wheat in the nation. We’re number one in the production of durum wheat, flax, canola, barley ebbs and flows. We have been number one, number two, number three at times. Potatoes and sugar beets were number two and three. But we also produce dry beans, peas, lentils. In fact, on dry beans, when you look at the pintos, navies, you look at the black beans, the kidney beans, the red beans, all of those different beans, when it comes right down to it, we produce 37% of all of the nation’s dry bean production. That just floors people. Peas and lentils, we used to hold the number one position pretty Actually, now Montana has started to produce and that sometimes we trade off with them first and second, but Montana has been a larger pulse producer. We’re number one in honey production. I think that floors people. In fact, put it this way, number two to double their production and North Dakota would still be number one in honey production in the nation. So, we can wear that with some pride and honor. Sunflower production, you talked about that. Sunflowers were generally number one at least on the oilseed side, confection side. There’s been some other states getting involved here recently in the last few years after the Ukrainian war. Ukraine used to produce the world’s largest amount of sunflowers. But we started to get back into it more and some other states did. So, kind of changes. But with all those 54 different commodities, it certainly produces some unique challenges, but it definitely produces wonderful opportunities. And it’s also put North Dakota in the spotlight when it comes to export markets in the world our footprint is expanding a lot of the commodities that we produce like peas lentils and the dry beans Along with hard red spring wheat Durham or semolina and sunflowers and Flax certainly our products that the rest of the world is looking for. So we’ve been able to really do more with respect to promoting North Dakota across the world and developing more markets. We actually export into, it’s 147 or 149 countries now. So not all at one time, but that is our footprint.

Quallich: And I don’t want to make any presumptions because I didn’t grow up growing up doing this and I didn’t grow up living here in North Dakota, but I did grow up in Ohio. So I’m a little familiar. But so then why have nearly all of the dairies locally owned gone dry?

Goehring: Well, most of the problem there is North Dakota. We’ve started to lose our way with animal agriculture about two, three decades ago. So what happens is when it’s not well established in your community and then someone proposes an animal egg facility, people tend to gravitate to the stories that existed back in the 70s and 80s. Oh my God, we’re going to pollute everything, they’re going to smell, they’re going to be bad. So what’s happened is not my backyard has been very prevalent across North Dakota and we haven’t supported animal egg. And without doing that, knowing that the economies of scale have changed, it’s not been well received. So in the last three, four, five years, there’s been more of an effort to focus on animal agriculture because if you truly want value added, that’s where it comes from. All the commodities that are produced on a farm, if they get fed to livestock, the turnover, the time that that dollar turns over in the economy is unbelievable and exponential. So it provides stability for marketing crops, but it also provides an outlet for all of that good fertilizer to go back on your field. And that’s what farmers are looking for. When you can get that natural manure, that natural fertilizer out there, you increase your microbiological activity, but you also tend to get a lot more of those trace minerals plus all your main minerals and elements in there. So, you start to produce healthier soil. So, we’re seeing some movement back towards this and we’ll see if it happens in the next couple of years. It seems to be.

Quallich: But then, of course, you have to raise the issue of the whole idea of being taxed for methane from cows with the climate change conversation going on.

Goehring: Yeah, and we’ve been involved in those conversations with the EPA, and we probably threw a monkey wrench into it to some degree because recent studies have found that feeding livestock is not near the issue as grazing livestock. And when I was in a meeting in Denver here a couple months ago, a study that they helped fund out of the University of Colorado showed that grazing livestock were producing far more than feeding livestock, grains and such. But along those lines, the chemistry background kind of gets me in trouble once in a while because then I throw out the normal stuff, which is methane, which will go up into the atmosphere, degrades after two years, or after eight years, I’m sorry, and it degrades into two elements, CO2 and water. So we just don’t fill the atmosphere with methane because if we did, somebody would light a match and the whole thing would blow up. No, it actually breaks down in the sun and it turns back into two very viable and essential compounds and elements we need to live, water and CO2.

Quallich: So still preliminary in discussions as far as what could be the future, in other words.

Goehring: Yep. And there will continue to be some research going on to help mitigate some of that, but we’re on a good path.

Quallich: Yeah. I wanted to turn also to another big topic here, and of course, that’s the economy. We’re talking about Pride of Dakota, not just from the earth, but also human hands and a lot and products that come from everybody who lives here in North Dakota. Specifically, Pride of Dakota, that was formed back in 1985, according to what they talk about, started off with 20 businesses, now they’re up to more than 500 companies. So how effective do you think that, I don’t want to call it a campaign, but the idea behind promoting local, how well do you think that’s holding up right now?

Goehring: I think it’s done really well. In fact, it’s probably been the impetus for a lot of other states to want to mimic or mirror exactly what we’ve done. And what a compliment when someone wants to do what you’ve done. So about 15 years ago when I became commissioner and we have regional and national meetings with my colleagues, we were actually having, excuse me, these conversations about our Pride to Dakota program and what it does to help market some of the local products, local items that are produced, not just the commodities, it’s not just food. And they started picking it up and doing more and more with that. And so we started seeing it grow across the nation. But in our program, when I got here, we had 326 companies, I believe. And we’re now like close to 563, I believe. So it’s grown dramatically, and it’s really an opportunity to help mom-and-pop businesses, to help established companies maybe do more to promote themselves, give them some marketing opportunities through some of our trade shows, some of our, we call them our showcases. Also, it’s an opportunity for them to do some networking, because when they do that, they start to learn from each other, some do’s and don’ts, maybe some things they could try. They could bounce some of their ideas out from other companies and other people. I mean, we have anything from, oh geez, artisans, gift manufacturers, food and beverage companies. We have publishers, service providers. We even have associate members, whether that’s commodity groups, other government agencies, educational institutions, other retailers, because it gets them the exposure where they wouldn’t normally get that. And it’s in a different light. And we only ask that if you’re a Pride of Dakota member, it’s $100 for the membership if you’re a Retailer or us or an associate member as we’d call it That’d be $250. But what an opportunity to get in front of tens of thousands of people every year and Create some exposure. I think about the upcoming event at the state fair that we do. We have Pride of Dakota Day up there, which by the way, I’ll do a little plug for it, we serve lunch for a dollar and that’s hot dog, milk, potato chips, I’m trying to remember what else, but it’s got great sponsors. Is one of our Pride Dakota members sponsor Cloverdale. You know Cloverdale was one of the first companies in 1985 that joined so they’re still here. We got Northland potatoes and prairie farms And all the proceeds are used for and donated to FFA kids who help out during that day, too But it’s it’s an opportunity for these companies to come in, to participate in these type of events, to do some networking, to get some promotion. Plus, if they need a little help, we actually will do some business development help, some marketing assistance. There’s different things. We’ve helped take companies, not just from a local level, but to a state level, or even a state level, to a national level, or maybe even international. If you think about Cloverdale where they are now and you think about Fresh Cab, if you’ve ever heard of that, or Dots Pretzels, those were, they all started with us. You know, wonderful success stories. Sure.

Quallich: I want to though, and I’m sure I’m not the first and I probably won’t be the last to bring this up to you. How do you counter the argument, well, I want to buy local, but I just can’t afford to buy everything local because generally, I mean, yes, you get what you pay for, for buying handcrafted quality products, not to say that there aren’t nationwide, but nevertheless, how do you try to counter that argument of why you need to buy local versus buying on the national scale?

Goehring: Well, you never – just be thankful we live in the United States of America and you have choices. We encourage it, but we don’t tell people they have to. And quite frankly, when you think about some of our vendors and some of the people that are involved, they don’t have everything that our family is looking for. Maybe there’s one or two things that that they can get. It’s kind of like our some of our Pride of Dakota members are also members of farmers markets. So they’ll they’ll bring breads, pastries, products to a show and and but there might be something that somebody really wants that they can get local. And we just encourage it and let them know that it’s available. If it works into their budget and they make that decision, absolutely. It’s great, but I don’t tell people they have to. I just let them know that if there’s an opportunity here and they can certainly take hold of it.

Quallich: So it’s not necessarily about, it’s about basically getting the message that there are great products being made right here in North Dakota that if you’re not looking to buy for you know just a farmer’s market person if they’re selling a bunch of tomatoes and then you can go down the street to a massive retailer and buy a whole thing of them for I don’t even know how much great buy here but if you can’t you’ve got X retailer down the street.

Goehring: Yeah no absolutely now probably when it comes to tomatoes what I’ve been told by people they want to buy local. They’ll go buy the cucumbers someplace else, but the tomatoes, they want to buy local. They say they taste better. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t know. I generally eat salsa. I’m not a tomato person, but I love salsa and I love ketchup.

Quallich: Okay. Well, never too late to change the commissioner. But we talked about buying local, but obviously not only just dealing with the competitors, but you know, we’re not just talking about Pride of North Dakota now, we’re talking, or Pride of Dakota, I should say, get that name right, we’re dealing with Pride of Dakota, but we’re also dealing now with inflation, not just with that brand, but also with the ag and that community as well. So, what are you hearing from producers on both ends of the spectrum?

Goehring: Frustration. The tough thing in agriculture is you buy retail, sell wholesale. So you’re subject to all of the price fluctuations that exist, you know, buying all those products and services for your farm so that you can plant a crop, so you can manage and care for livestock. But then the problem is you’re selling wholesale on the backside and that market fluctuates a lot. And generally it’s behind a lot. So there’s times that producers are really, you know, struggling with trying to meet the cost of production and the cost of operating. And there’s bad years. Sometimes they have to float some of that debt into the next year and maybe even for a couple of years, there’s been a few of those before and then all of a sudden they’re having to put that on long-term debt against some of their well-positioned assets, but it gets to be a challenge. But for the consumer, they’re subject to it also and maybe for different reasons. And this is one thing I’d like to, if I could, if I was king for a day and I could change something I would change how retailers budget for their business in every other business we generally look at budgeting in percentage levels and That’s all fine and good when you have more stability, but when you’re dealing with food, it’s a little different because you may set a budget and you may say you want to recoup, you know, at least 6 or 7% profit on the backside of that because you have overhead and things you have to be concerned about going forward. But when the price of your commodities drop, but you can’t afford to give away that excess, because that’s the cushion you’re trying to build into the system, when they probably should be looking at a per unit, for every unit. If I sell 52,000 loaves of bread, I need to recover this much money to keep my doors open, pay my labor, and heat my building, or use the air conditioner. Instead, they’re looking at a price or a value associated with that loaf of bread. So if a loaf of bread drops in price, and let’s just say commodities drop substantially, and a loaf of bread drops from $4 to $2 on the wholesale side, they still have to recover. So the price isn’t going down that much. And that’s, that hurts the consumer a lot more. And then consumers get frustrated because they said, well, farmers say they’re not getting enough money for their product. We’re still paying a lot for a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, and everything else on the shelf. And I very much get that. And we’re all feeling it, and I am sympathetic to it.

Quallich: Never mind, we couldn’t buy toilet paper about four years ago, or at least small families. I have never bought a big multi-pack for a two-person family like myself. But thank goodness, those days seem to be far behind us. Now, I will ask you, though, as King for a Day, at least as far as this year is concerned, would you like to take a mulligan on the weather and help out our farmers and ranchers more?

Goehring: Oh, God. Please help me there. What a challenge. When you get, and I’ll just use this in general terms, when you get east of 83, from north From north to south, those guys are getting hammered. I’ve heard guys just finally quit, they couldn’t get all the crop in. The ones that do have a crop in, fields are flooding out. They’ve got multiple issues to deal with when it comes to disease and potential disease just simply because of the high humidity and how pathogens seem to thrive under those conditions and certain insects. So, they got some challenges out there. The only silver lining on the cloud would be the fact that we’re growing ample grass for a lot of our livestock producers. So that’s a good thing.

Quallich: It seems like you can’t have it both ways, I suppose. Gosh.

Goehring: Yeah. Then you get into Western North Dakota beautiful out there I’ll say idyllic for the most part and I know you can’t speak for everyone. So someone’s probably you know Suffering a little bit right now. They’re saying why would you say that? I’m hurting things are not good on our farm, but Overall I’d say we’re gonna have to work through this. We’ll see what happens with the weather in the month of July. Because that’s really going to be telling as we get to harvesting of small grains and we’ll have development of row crops, especially corn, we’ll start seeing pollinating and coming on in the next probably two weeks.

Quallich: Well, I was going to say, we’re shooting this on this Monday, and this is going to air today. So, with the lack of rain, at least in the Bismarck-Minot area, and the high 90 temperatures, it seems like that could be helpful to a lot of folks.

Goehring: Well, and it isn’t going to hurt us that much because we have ample moisture. If you gave this to us, it would hurt desperately. But right now, we have ample moisture. It’ll, drying up will help that crop root down and it should be a better situation.

Quallich: How different than we were two to three years ago when everywhere you drove a lot of fields just like they were just covered in hay.

Goehring: Yeah, yeah. We’ve had some tough years on the other side of that coin.

Quallich: Certainly have. So, Commissioner, as far as people like myself who aren’t directly responsible for producing any sort of agricultural products and goods, how can we help our friends out in the ag field?

Goehring: Keep consuming. You know, I hate to say that there gets to be some bad feelings at times, especially when you see prices fluctuating at the store and farmers tend not to say very much, but when they do, it’s generally because it’s what’s on their mind at the moment. And if prices are down and production looks like it’s hurt and they’re probably not very happy with the economic situation they’re dealing with, some would say, well, they’re just whining again. Well, they got a lot at risk, so be a little patient with them. Certainly, visit with our congressional delegation and support, you know, our food security system. Support the Farm Bill, because what it gives us is food security in our nation. Unlike any other we still spend the least amount of money of our disposable income on food compared to other nations, other places that I’ve visited where 51, 60% of their disposable income is used on food. We’re only using seven to 9% of our disposable income on food. So we’re blessed in that way. And we gotta do our best to keep a stiff upper lip and keep plodding on.

Quallich: Well, Commissioner, I really thank you for your time today. I have enjoyed your conversation with me and I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure a lot of our viewers have as well. So hopefully a lot of our fellow North Dakotans will heed your advice. So again, thank you so much, Commissioner, for being here. And thank you for watching the Voice of the People podcast here on KXnet.com. We’ll be back soon with more on the questions and answers affecting you. Because remember, it’s your voice that matters: The Voice of the People.

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