Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 3: And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, do you remember the episode we did with Chase Emerson.
Speaker 3: I do about land development in Arizona.
Speaker 1: Right, So that was we're talking to a land broker,
Speaker 1: someone who helped facilitate the sale of sort of unused
Speaker 1: or agricultural land to homeowners or to sort of home builders.
Speaker 1: But there's been a lot of talk, and we touched
Speaker 1: on it a bit in that episode about like the
Speaker 1: sustainability of water usage in Arizona.
Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, there was a pretty big headline that
Speaker 3: came out quite recently saying that Arizona was going to
Speaker 3: halt new home approvals in parts of Phoenix because of
Speaker 3: concerns over water availability.
Speaker 1: Right, and so there's this question about like, Okay, Arizona
Speaker 1: is like this boomstae right, tons of population growth, tons
Speaker 1: of land, people moving there has been booming for years.
Speaker 1: It's booming from a industrial standpoint too. There's all these
Speaker 1: new semiconductor conductors.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Arizona touches everything.
Speaker 3: For us, it does. And also Arizona water seems to
Speaker 3: touch everything. And I mean this came up in the
Speaker 3: Chase Emerson episode, but I remember I asked someone from
Speaker 3: the Biden administration about it as well. But you know,
Speaker 3: why are we building these big factories, semiconductor factories that
Speaker 3: use a lot of water in the desert. Why are
Speaker 3: we developing lots of land in the desert. Why are
Speaker 3: we farming a bunch of water intensive stuff in the desert?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, this is how it goes in people's head. They're
Speaker 1: booming in Arizona, there's water scarcity, and then they discover
Speaker 1: that Arizona, despite being the desert, seventy five percent of
Speaker 1: the water used in Arizona is agriculture. And they go, what,
Speaker 1: that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Why are we built?
Speaker 1: Why are we growing food or growing grains or crops
Speaker 1: in the desert. And people say, oh, well that's the problem.
Speaker 1: We just need to stop growing in the desert. And
Speaker 1: the conversation ends there. But obviously all of these things
Speaker 1: are like way more complicated than like the five seconds
Speaker 1: it takes you to reach that conclusion.
Speaker 3: I'm very curious how this became a thing, Like how
Speaker 3: did agriculture become a big part of the Arizona economy,
Speaker 3: and why, in particular does it seem like we are
Speaker 3: farming water intensive crops in an area where water nowadays
Speaker 3: seems to be a concern, And maybe that's the key.
Speaker 3: It didn't used to be as much of a concern
Speaker 3: and now it is. But I am very interested in
Speaker 3: hearing this side of the story.
Speaker 1: I think they've always sort of wondered, like, what's the
Speaker 1: deal with agriculture in the middle of the desert. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we literally have the perfect guest, because as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's been going on for a long time. We have
Speaker 1: the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Trevor Bales.
Speaker 1: He is a six generation farmer in Arizona. He runs
Speaker 1: bales Hay Farm and Ranch, which grows elfelf like. He's
Speaker 1: based in Buckeye, Arizona, in the southwest part of the state.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk all about the history, the operations,
Speaker 1: the water usage, all of these things about growing el
Speaker 1: felfa in the desert. So, Trevor, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on.
Speaker 4: Odd lots, Hi guy, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a really obnoxious question? Yeah, to start,
Speaker 1: Bales like, so people are gonna like this their guest
Speaker 1: is made up.
Speaker 3: The nominative determined the farmer.
Speaker 2: In Arizona's last name is Bales. Like you might you
Speaker 2: cannot be real.
Speaker 4: No, we did not change her name. It's been bales before.
Speaker 4: It was bales of alfalfa, was bales of cotton, so
Speaker 4: still a bail.
Speaker 1: That is a very incredible So sixth generation from an
Speaker 1: Arizona talk to us about like the beginning of your
Speaker 1: family's history. I guess as a farming family in Alzona.
Speaker 4: My family that homestead in Arizona. Their last name was
Speaker 4: actually BLOATD. B. E. L. O At the Bloat family, Okay,
Speaker 4: And they came out here as cattle ranchers, and the
Speaker 4: cattle ranching turned into farming and cattle, and then it
Speaker 4: turned into a feed lot and farming. The farm supplied
Speaker 4: the feed lot, and then it transitioned into only farming.
Speaker 4: Now that's over a span of one hundred twenty plus years,
Speaker 4: but that's in a nutshell. So they came over here. Man,
Speaker 4: my great great great great grandpa, I think you had
Speaker 4: fourteen kids or something. So we currently farm one thousand acres, which,
Speaker 4: if you think about it, we're very lucky to have
Speaker 4: that many acres when it's been split so many different
Speaker 4: times between children and family. We're lucky to have that.
Speaker 4: But they came in eighteen twenties, but the homestead in
Speaker 4: eighteen ninety one, so before Arizona was even a state.
Speaker 4: My great great great grandpa was integral in building the
Speaker 4: canal district that we currently use for irrigating our crops.
Speaker 4: So we have an extremely long history. One of our
Speaker 4: cattle brands is actually in the top one of the
Speaker 4: first I think it's like a four hundred and fiftieth
Speaker 4: or four hundred and forty something with cattle brand. So
Speaker 4: we've been here a very long time, have a deep
Speaker 4: history wow in the state. And then along the way,
Speaker 4: my great grandpa Wallace Bales married Alberta Belote. Him and
Speaker 4: his son, my grandpa Steve, purchased the farm from the
Speaker 4: in laws and became the Bales Farm.
Speaker 3: Let me ask a super basic question, which is, you
Speaker 3: know a lot of people I think they hear alfalfa
Speaker 3: and if they're not out in the country, they're thinking
Speaker 3: about those little alfalfa sprouts that you might get on
Speaker 3: your salads or is it garnish or something like that.
Speaker 3: But talk to us about what alfalfa actually is and
Speaker 3: the role that it plays. In agriculture.
Speaker 4: So, alfalfa is a very very unique plant. It's a forage.
Speaker 4: It has great relative feed value properties or protein properties.
Speaker 4: It's very good for making high quality milk. It's very
Speaker 4: good for making high quality beef. What makes it so
Speaker 4: unique is its heartiness, especially for what we do. Now
Speaker 4: this changes across the country because Arizona is much like
Speaker 4: a greenhouse effect I've kind of compared it to. Because
Speaker 4: of our temperature, we are in the field eight to
Speaker 4: twelve times a year. We're in there cutting that alfalfa. Now,
Speaker 4: there is no other crop other than grass, and even
Speaker 4: grass does not have the feed qualities that of alfalfa
Speaker 4: has that you can go in there and cut multiple
Speaker 4: times in a year and then for several years after that.
Speaker 4: We can keep an alfalfa stand in for four to
Speaker 4: five years, where other states where they're only in there
Speaker 4: cutting their crop two or three times, they can leave
Speaker 4: it in six, seven, eight years. But because of that,
Speaker 4: because that alfalfa stays in for so long, it gets
Speaker 4: a bad reputation as to what you were talking about earlier,
Speaker 4: as water people call it a very high intensive water
Speaker 4: use crop. Well, a lot is being left out. That
Speaker 4: crop stays in. It's a very efficient crop when you
Speaker 4: look at all the work that goes into it. We
Speaker 4: plant it and we leave it in for four to
Speaker 4: five years, so it is producing great feed quality for cattle, horses,
Speaker 4: milk cows, beef cows for years. No other crop can
Speaker 4: do that. Corn you plant it once, it takes a
Speaker 4: massive amount of water, and then you harvest it once.
Speaker 4: That's so silage.
Speaker 3: It's basically a perennial, right, like it keeps coming back.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, absolutely correct, yes, but it does go down
Speaker 4: in value. Where we do take it out, the yields
Speaker 4: aren't as good. So after about the fourth fifth year,
Speaker 4: we'll see the yields will go down and we will
Speaker 4: take the field out. We'll apply manure to it for
Speaker 4: the fertilizer and go through the whole process, and usually
Speaker 4: we'll try to have a rotation crop in between it
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: But just this gets to the key question, and I
Speaker 2: feel like I sort of jumped right to it, so.
Speaker 4: People look, no, no, I did jump to it quick, No.
Speaker 1: No, no, But this is really I think, sort of
Speaker 1: the key of the argument, which is that you can
Speaker 1: grow elf elfa elsewhere outside of Arizona. But the point
Speaker 1: that you're trying to make is that there's something about
Speaker 1: the uniqueness of the Arizona climate. So, setting aside the
Speaker 1: water issue, Yeah, there's something about the Arizona climate specifically
Speaker 1: that gets you several turns in a year.
Speaker 4: Do you know the five seas of Arizona.
Speaker 2: No, but I can't wait to learn them.
Speaker 4: So right, So, and that back to like the history
Speaker 4: of why are they farming in Arizona. Water and agriculture
Speaker 4: was were never a hot topic in Arizona until Phoenix
Speaker 4: got to be fourth, fifth, sixth largest city in the country. Right,
Speaker 4: We've been farming here for for like I just said,
Speaker 4: my head foumb was here in the eighteen twenties doing it.
Speaker 4: So the water was never a problem until humans came in.
Speaker 4: Cities came in, manufacturing came in. Farming actually paid for
Speaker 4: a lot of the water that is here in Phoenix
Speaker 4: Salt River SRP. The city couldn't afford it, so the
Speaker 4: farmers came in and they paid for the water system
Speaker 4: and now the city is using it. But anyways, back
Speaker 4: to the five seeds. Yeah, one of the climate. Because
Speaker 4: our climate copper, cattle, citrus, and cotton, Arizona makes some
Speaker 4: of the best cotton in the world. We make the
Speaker 4: best outfoufro in the world. We make some of the
Speaker 4: best wheat and barley, and we make some of the
Speaker 4: best corn in the world. It's because of our climate.
Speaker 4: And so, like you said, alfalfa can be grown other places,
Speaker 4: but the quality is nowhere near the same and it
Speaker 4: can't be grown everywhere. That not all the climates can
Speaker 4: grow alf alfa.
Speaker 3: So one thing I read, and again I'm not a farmer,
Speaker 3: so I'm just reading trying to read various things on
Speaker 3: this topic. But one thing I read was that farmers
Speaker 3: in Arizona like alfalfa because it's reliable and because it
Speaker 3: grows well in that environment, provided there's enough water around.
Speaker 3: Is that the right way of thinking about it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, But that's I mean, that's any crop, right, We're
Speaker 4: just like the industry of farming is industry and what
Speaker 4: is supplying? What is demand? Right? Well, cotton used to
Speaker 4: be the demand. Citrus used to be the demand, and
Speaker 4: unfortunately the demand with the mills in China and China's
Speaker 4: rules about importing cotton, Cotton's no longer demand. So they
Speaker 4: go to was the big demand, which right now there
Speaker 4: are a lot of dairies around, and the dairies need
Speaker 4: a lot of protein to make high quality milk, which
Speaker 4: we actually ship all over the world from this area,
Speaker 4: and alfalfa is the most efficient way to make high
Speaker 4: quality milk. If they think water is a problem, now,
Speaker 4: if every farmer grew corn for the dairies, holy smokes,
Speaker 4: there wouldn't cotton corn corn man corny uses a lot
Speaker 4: of water. So yes, yes and no what you said?
Speaker 4: Yes and no. Yes we like it, but for those
Speaker 4: same reasons, any other crop is the same thing.
Speaker 1: So in the end, whether we're growing alfalfa, whether we're
Speaker 1: growing corn, I guess whether we're growing soy other things
Speaker 1: Like there's like a certain math, right, there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of water, there's a certain amount of human labor,
Speaker 1: you get a certain amount of feed. At the end,
Speaker 1: those go to feed cows and then the cows either
Speaker 1: become beef before they become for milk. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit further about like, okay, you say like corn.
Speaker 1: That would be much worse if we switched to replacing
Speaker 1: elfelfa with corn, Like how does the math work out?
Speaker 1: What are we talking about?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: Lost with that repas.
Speaker 4: And I've never grown corn myself, but my dad used
Speaker 4: to grow quite a bit. My grandfather would for our
Speaker 4: own feed lot. By the time I came along, we
Speaker 4: don't grow as much. But the corn crop in a
Speaker 4: short like one hundred and twenty day corn uses approximately
Speaker 4: the same amount of water as my whole year, my
Speaker 4: whole year of the crop about falca, which is around
Speaker 4: seven seven acre foot as we like committed with by
Speaker 4: acre feet six to seven acre feet. But now where
Speaker 4: I don't know, because you would have to get a nutritionist,
Speaker 4: is in that same acre of ground of soil that
Speaker 4: one harvest of corn. What energy does it produce versus alfalfa?
Speaker 4: And that I don't know that part. Just man, I'm
Speaker 4: just not not in the dairy market at all. I'm
Speaker 4: not well. Let me ask mart Let.
Speaker 1: Me ask you another question. Let me ask you another question.
Speaker 1: Then that's sort of related. So you say, like Arizona
Speaker 1: elfelfa is better than elfelfa elsewhere?
Speaker 2: How much you talk us through that a little bit more?
Speaker 1: What is better about growing it in Arizona versus other
Speaker 1: parts of this country because it has grown elsewhere in
Speaker 1: this country? So is it the quality of the product,
Speaker 1: or is it the yield or the amount of turns
Speaker 1: that you can get in a year from the same
Speaker 1: amount of land.
Speaker 2: And then like we have to talk us through.
Speaker 4: The differences, it's most of the quality. So a lot
Speaker 4: of other states, so we average, we average about nine
Speaker 4: tons per acre for the year. Depending on the soil type,
Speaker 4: we can get nine to ten tons per year. Now,
Speaker 4: but with that's with ten to twelve cuttings. A lot
Speaker 4: of other states they can get seven to eight tons
Speaker 4: per year, but that's on half the cuttings, and so
Speaker 4: each cutting is making a massive amount of Hey. Each time,
Speaker 4: the bigger the stand gets, the lower the quality gets.
Speaker 4: It gets real big, it gets real kind of tough,
Speaker 4: the stems get real big. And with that size. What's
Speaker 4: extremely important about alfalfa for a few reasons. One, if
Speaker 4: you bail it with too much moisture, the bail will
Speaker 4: it will start to mold, it will go bad. It
Speaker 4: can also I don't know if you've ever heard of
Speaker 4: a hay fire, but if it has too much moisture
Speaker 4: and all the pressure in that baler when they're packing
Speaker 4: the bail and you store it creates heat from the
Speaker 4: moisture inside and whatever is inside the bail, and it'll
Speaker 4: catch on fire. So the dry down process, the curing
Speaker 4: process is extremely important. And a lot of the country
Speaker 4: they don't have the climate we have, so they're fighting
Speaker 4: a lot more weather when we fight. And so the
Speaker 4: fact that we're able to get it dried down and
Speaker 4: to cure and then also not have these massive two
Speaker 4: or three ton cuttings, Like when you cut alfalfa that's
Speaker 4: two tons or more, it's so big and thick, and
Speaker 4: it's hard to get it to cure out. Well, we
Speaker 4: go in there every thirty days or less, twenty five
Speaker 4: to thirty days we cut it. It's nice, it's small,
Speaker 4: and it's thinned out, and it dries and it cures
Speaker 4: very pretty, and it keeps a lot of color, and
Speaker 4: it keeps the leaf. The leaf is the important part
Speaker 4: of that plant. That's where all the nutrition is. And
Speaker 4: a lot of these other places have to flip it
Speaker 4: two or three times. Oh it's not dried enough. Let's
Speaker 4: flip it over. You just got to get the bottom
Speaker 4: to dry out, because when you cut it, it's laying
Speaker 4: there on the ground. Well, the part that's up against
Speaker 4: the ground of the of the alfalfa stand. It's not
Speaker 4: seeing the sun ever, it's down there underneath the super
Speaker 4: thick alfalfa. So then they flip it over all right,
Speaker 4: now you dried out that side, well, darn it. And
Speaker 4: then a rainstorm came, we got to flip it back
Speaker 4: over again because now that side's wet. And so they
Speaker 4: just don't produce the quality that we produce or the
Speaker 4: connage too. And with the rest of the country, a
Speaker 4: lot of the country does rely on we call it
Speaker 4: dry land farming, where they do rely on rain. When
Speaker 4: there's a drought across the country, Arizona fills that gap.
Speaker 4: And when there's too much, like there's been years where
Speaker 4: Idaho or Texas and Texas a huge market, they have
Speaker 4: so much rain they cannot get in their fields and
Speaker 4: they cannot harvest it. So guess what, it's almost the
Speaker 4: same problem as having the drought, right, you still can't
Speaker 4: you don't get anything out of your fields, and so
Speaker 4: Arizona fills in that gap.
Speaker 3: So I take the point about you know, it's easier
Speaker 3: to cure given the dry or weather, and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe it's producing more higher quality alfalfa, But how much
Speaker 3: does the quality actually matter? Because doesn't most of this
Speaker 3: go to cows for feeds like do the cows care
Speaker 3: about the color of the alfalfa hey that they're eating.
Speaker 4: My specific market is the horse market, so people with
Speaker 4: horses that have anywhere from I mean, we've fed horses
Speaker 4: that are been in the Kentucky Derby. We sent a
Speaker 4: hay to Florida where there's soup, where there's horses that
Speaker 4: fly on private jets back and forth from other countries
Speaker 4: for breeding purposes and racing. I don't know what they don't.
Speaker 4: I'm not much of a horse person, but yes, to
Speaker 4: them it is extremely important. And even back to the
Speaker 4: cattle side, yes, it's important because that feed value changes,
Speaker 4: and that feed value is extremely important. The older the
Speaker 4: hay gets, the lower the feed value goes down. That
Speaker 4: feed value is in direct connection to the quality of
Speaker 4: milk that the cow produces. So visual quality for horse
Speaker 4: people is extremely important. Then test quality for cattle, for
Speaker 4: milk cows is extremely important, and beef not so much.
Speaker 4: For beef, I mean, you can think lower quality hay
Speaker 4: is fine, but once it's laying in the field and
Speaker 4: it gets rained on, that does take the quality away
Speaker 4: for both milk cows and or horses. And back to
Speaker 4: the even that feed quality for specifically horses that are
Speaker 4: race horses, ropers, barrel racing horses that they need that
Speaker 4: high protein to be able to compete with whether they're
Speaker 4: doing so. Equality is very important. And there's a lot
Speaker 4: of people that have horses just as pets and they
Speaker 4: never ride them. They just like having a horse. In
Speaker 4: that situation, it's just not important.
Speaker 3: Let me ask another basic how it works question, which
Speaker 3: is how do you actually water the alfalfa? So we
Speaker 3: talked about harvesting and curing, but what does the watering
Speaker 3: process actually look like? And you mentioned that I think
Speaker 3: one of your grandparents had built canals on your farm
Speaker 3: that you presumably use for irrigation. Is that what you're doing?
Speaker 4: So that's crazy. With all this water stuff, Arizona has
Speaker 4: less acres than it's ever had and we're more efficient
Speaker 4: than we've ever been. But so the Healer River we
Speaker 4: farm right off the Healer River, now the Healer River.
Speaker 4: They used to call it the Grand or the Mighty Fruit.
Speaker 4: They called it something Healer River, and there was always water.
Speaker 4: So they started this canal that was upriver and then
Speaker 4: the water would come in on this canal and it
Speaker 4: would and they kind of followed the man it's amazing
Speaker 4: the way they did it back then and how they
Speaker 4: were able to find without GPS the high points of
Speaker 4: this little valley we're in, and they kind of followed
Speaker 4: the spine of this little valley. And so there's that
Speaker 4: main canal that feeds water to all the farmers that
Speaker 4: are within the district. So we're very closely measured on
Speaker 4: how much water we use. People like to imagine we're
Speaker 4: just using it as much water as we can. We
Speaker 4: are not at all. We get cut off if we
Speaker 4: use too much. You can't just do whatever you want,
Speaker 4: so the district manages that water. That water goes along
Speaker 4: farmers like myself. I will order water a specific amount
Speaker 4: for a time, and then we'll go down a lateral
Speaker 4: ditch that feeds off the canal, and that lateral ditch
Speaker 4: will then will then carry water to the ditch that
Speaker 4: connects to my fields. Now, all of our fields are
Speaker 4: laser leveled, so they're flat side to side with a
Speaker 4: end fall. So there's a little bit of geometry involved
Speaker 4: with the farming. So when you open the water in
Speaker 4: that designated area of the field, which might be one
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty foot wide quarter mile long, very evenly
Speaker 4: from side to side, so you're covering the whole thing
Speaker 4: and that makes it very efficient work versus if you
Speaker 4: didn't have it flat, the water would just go all
Speaker 4: different areas. Like I said, it's section. You know, one
Speaker 4: hundred acre field is sectioned off in one hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty foot sections. So we're using a gradual decline in
Speaker 4: the land or fall to measure that specific area efficiently.
Speaker 4: And that's specifically how I irrigate. But what has become
Speaker 4: a very efficient way of irrigation is subsurface drip, which
Speaker 4: is becoming pretty popular in Arizona. Sistic I'd like to
Speaker 4: do it, It's just expensive.
Speaker 2: What is that do it?
Speaker 4: That's where everything is underground, and so you were you're
Speaker 4: saving on evaporation, but you were getting that water directly
Speaker 4: to the root. I mean you were just hitting that
Speaker 4: root with water, so there's no evaporation. It's which evaporation
Speaker 4: is not as much as people like to argue all evaporation.
Speaker 4: We've done studies. It's like two percent or less. It's
Speaker 4: it's very very low.
Speaker 3: This is this is my dream for my garden. Is
Speaker 3: a sister a system of underwater irrigation.
Speaker 2: Instead of Yeah, amateur gardeners do that. Yeah, yeah you can't.
Speaker 3: I mean, like it would take a lot. But for instance,
Speaker 3: we at the moment we have a bunch of underground
Speaker 3: like hoses and pipelines going through two and a half
Speaker 3: acres and they're all leaking. So that's fun. So maybe
Speaker 3: I actually already have subterranean irrigation in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you anticipated, Trevor a question I was going to ask,
Speaker 1: which is about advances in water use technology over time,
Speaker 1: and I have to imagine maybe there are some similarities,
Speaker 1: but as you mentioned, it's gotten more efficient probably relative
Speaker 1: to when you know your ancestors were on the same land.
Speaker 2: How does it look differently?
Speaker 1: What are some of the advances that have been made
Speaker 1: since some of your ancestors were farming on the same
Speaker 1: land to get better output with less water.
Speaker 4: That laser system has been huge. What they what they
Speaker 4: used to do is everything was in furrows, which a
Speaker 4: furrow is it's like a washboard, like an old washboard.
Speaker 4: Washboard is, yes, but then it runs the water would
Speaker 4: run down there by having all those furrows. I mean,
Speaker 4: if you can imagine if you've got like a relatively
Speaker 4: flat area and you just open the water up. The
Speaker 4: water is gonna follow the way of least resistance, so
Speaker 4: you're just gonna have this water go right down that
Speaker 4: one area and then all that everything else is dry.
Speaker 4: So what they did back then is they would do
Speaker 4: these furrows and then and then that then see you
Speaker 4: have all these these low like a washboard. The water
Speaker 4: would stay in the low spots and then but then
Speaker 4: everything would get watered. But it was just not very efficient.
Speaker 4: It was rough, It was hard on equipment, and the
Speaker 4: planter or the furrow maker. Man, they're they're heavy, they're
Speaker 4: just how they're there. And then before GPS, so you
Speaker 4: still weren't very straight man. And the fact that they
Speaker 4: thought of that was it was great right like man
Speaker 4: back then that they that they saw that insight, like hey,
Speaker 4: let's make these washboards if you will, and the water
Speaker 4: is hitting all areas, which is impressive. And then they
Speaker 4: came up with the laser system and now they use
Speaker 4: the GPS system. But what we have what is very
Speaker 4: foreign to pretty much every state except California and Arizona,
Speaker 4: there's a few other places, is we call them borders.
Speaker 4: It's a dirt ridge that runs from the top of
Speaker 4: the field to the bottom of the field. And that's
Speaker 4: earlier I was talking about sectioning off your field to irrigate.
Speaker 4: You run a border from top to bottom and it's
Speaker 4: two about two feet tall, and then you go over
Speaker 4: and it depends because every field does have natural sidefall,
Speaker 4: but the goal is to between those two borders get
Speaker 4: rid of that because you want that water to flow evenly.
Speaker 4: You know, two inches deep across that whole one hundred
Speaker 4: or however many feet you know, one hundred and or
Speaker 4: ninth sixty feet. If it's a steep field, then you
Speaker 4: have a bunch of sixty feet borders. If it's a
Speaker 4: steep field, you have a fewer one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: plus borders. But that laser leveling has been an amazing
Speaker 4: tool for running irrigation extremely efficient. Like I said, we
Speaker 4: open up the area on that little section one hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty foot by quarter mile, and that water runs,
Speaker 4: like I said, two inches deep or less just the
Speaker 4: length of that and I mean you imagine it looks
Speaker 4: like it's like one hundred and twenty foot That water
Speaker 4: is just going just even with itself all the way
Speaker 4: it gets down to the bottom of the field. You
Speaker 4: shut it off and it just kind of drains itself
Speaker 4: right there. It just kind of stops right there. I mean,
Speaker 4: if you have irrigators that aren't paying attention and they'll
Speaker 4: fall asleep, then they'll mess up. But when everything's going correctly, man,
Speaker 4: it's just so efficient and so smooth, so that that
Speaker 4: laser system has been probably the best most efficient way. Okay,
Speaker 4: I should say the best, probably the most efficient way
Speaker 4: just because what it costs to do versus the subsurface
Speaker 4: drip is definitely the most efficient way. But oh it
Speaker 4: costs depending on like with oil prices where they are,
Speaker 4: and yeah, and like PBC, everything is, everything is petroleum based.
Speaker 4: So right now it's probably three thousand or more dollars
Speaker 4: per acre to put all that in. When petroleum based
Speaker 4: things are cheaper, you can two thousand dollars an acre
Speaker 4: used to be the kind of the number. Well, when
Speaker 4: you're looking at bigger farms, four thous an acre farm.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, that's real quick.
Speaker 3: So let me ask a question that kind of like
Speaker 3: cuts to the heart of a lot of this discussion,
Speaker 3: But how real or salient our concerns over water for
Speaker 3: you right now? Like, have you witnessed water shortages during
Speaker 3: your time as a farmer, has it affected your business?
Speaker 3: Are you getting perhaps more pressures from you know, external
Speaker 3: sources to reduce your water use? How is it actually
Speaker 3: playing out for you?
Speaker 4: So, for us, it's kind of unique. Right where we
Speaker 4: farm where the area they call a water logged area
Speaker 4: with extremely extremely salty water, and a lot of the
Speaker 4: water that we specifically use for the past one hundred
Speaker 4: years has come from Phoenix water treatment plant. Where I farm,
Speaker 4: we're not allowed to grow produced because it comes from
Speaker 4: water treatment. We don't get water from the Colorado River,
Speaker 4: I don't get water from the Salt River Project. Water
Speaker 4: comes from eastern Arizona as the rains come down and
Speaker 4: it trickles down the Salt River and it comes into
Speaker 4: the Hila River and it keeps our aquifer very full
Speaker 4: of water rather but our water is so salty. And
Speaker 4: then then taking the water from the paying the city
Speaker 4: for their water back before Phoenix was a big city.
Speaker 4: They loved that we took their water. And so we've
Speaker 4: never really had a right where eye farm specifically. Anyways,
Speaker 4: we've never had a fear of losing our water until
Speaker 4: with technology, the water treatment plants have gotten really good
Speaker 4: at cleaning water and desalinization plants. They look our no
Speaker 4: one ever wanted our water. They're like, no, no, we
Speaker 4: don't want your water. It's disgusting, it's super salty. We
Speaker 4: can't use it for anything. Like we're glad you guys
Speaker 4: are actually using it, because if you weren't, this place
Speaker 4: would be almost like a swamp down here, Like there
Speaker 4: are areas if you can drive with the ground is
Speaker 4: always slightly muddy, and that's because that water's like three
Speaker 4: or four feet underground. It's just right down there. And
Speaker 4: so they love that we're farming it, pumping it up
Speaker 4: the ground and using it because they don't want to
Speaker 4: deal with with the swamp. I guess I'm not not
Speaker 4: a literal swamp. But what's also changed a lot years
Speaker 4: ago they brought in a tree called a salt cedar tree,
Speaker 4: and it's from I think it's from Africa, the Middle East.
Speaker 4: I don't rember where it's from, but it's not native
Speaker 4: to Arizona. And this tree uses a lot of water
Speaker 4: and it has overgrown the Heala River or the river
Speaker 4: I just told you I farmed on and it uses
Speaker 4: a lot of water. And since that tree has been
Speaker 4: brought in and it's infested the river and even the desert.
Speaker 4: The water doesn't flow down the Hala River very much anymore,
Speaker 4: it rarely does it. Senator seen a cur she's been
Speaker 4: pushing and other people then pushing. Let's clean out this
Speaker 4: non native invasive tree that uses a lot of water.
Speaker 4: But the animal rights are like, oh there's owls and
Speaker 4: stuff living in there, and butterflies or something so big picture.
Speaker 1: Okay, maybe your firm specifically is in a position where
Speaker 1: it's not for historically a lot of the water that
Speaker 1: used no one else wanted it. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: at some point, like for your industry, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you talk to other farmers like this is coming to
Speaker 1: a head, like, okay, there is this much water that
Speaker 1: can be used for agriculture. There's household demand, there's industrial demand.
Speaker 1: Like is someone gonna have to give.
Speaker 4: Here, Yes, somewhere it is gonna have to get I
Speaker 4: guess I didn't finish my other thoughts your question. With
Speaker 4: desalinization plants, people are now looking at our water thinking,
Speaker 4: oh huh, there's a bunch of water right there that
Speaker 4: these farmer farmers have that we can have. And now
Speaker 4: that the city is good at cleaning the water, they're
Speaker 4: looking at it thinking, oh, maybe we'll just go buy
Speaker 4: this water from the farmers. Once they're they're one hundred
Speaker 4: year deal pop ends with the city. So that is
Speaker 4: a fear of ours, yes, and so then yes, to
Speaker 4: your point, we do realize that there's something's gonna have
Speaker 4: to give. And there used to be good laws in
Speaker 4: place about where you could build because it is a desert.
Speaker 4: The idea back and you'd have to go back and
Speaker 4: look at the history and judgments and stuff, but they
Speaker 4: said you you had to build where you could have water. Well,
Speaker 4: then it got real fishy because the thought was as
Speaker 4: home builders and manufacturing bought property from farmers, that water
Speaker 4: would then go from a farmer to a house. So
Speaker 4: you're you just traded from one this industry to another.
Speaker 4: Well then the water laws up, and you know, over
Speaker 4: my pay grade in the city started, Oh, well, technically
Speaker 4: we could send water up to this real pretty area
Speaker 4: over here where in the mountains where they want to
Speaker 4: build some houses. Then all of a sudden water gets
Speaker 4: sent another way. Oh there's a freeway up here. It
Speaker 4: sure would be nice to have buildings and stuff next
Speaker 4: to the freeway. Well, so then they started buying buying
Speaker 4: property in the desert and building in the desert, and
Speaker 4: they kind of skipped around the farm ground and then there,
Speaker 4: and now everyone's wondering like, oh, now we're low on water. Well,
Speaker 4: eighty years ago, when they kind of looked ahead to
Speaker 4: the future, they said, well, if we trade farm ground
Speaker 4: for housing and development, the water just changes traded hands. Well,
Speaker 4: then I said, I don't know, it happened before my time,
Speaker 4: but some water rules were changed, and that's where it
Speaker 4: gets pretty fishy. And that, to me, that's the real story.
Speaker 4: Who changes water rules? I mean, if I said the
Speaker 4: farmers didn't change a rule. We've been here farming for
Speaker 4: over one hundred we're farming less acres than ever. But
Speaker 4: so there are some things that kind of change that'd
Speaker 4: be interesting to get the full story on that, because like, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's big housing developments up in these areas that are
Speaker 4: very arid. There's no water, there's no farming that ever
Speaker 4: happened there. They just boom, let's throw in these several
Speaker 4: thousand homes and neighborhoods and use a whole bunch of water.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you, maybe a tough question, but
Speaker 3: is there anything that would make you reconsider or maybe
Speaker 3: rethink growing alfalfa, like what would be the conditions under
Speaker 3: which that is no longer either desirable or profitable for you.
Speaker 4: It's just like any other industry, right, I mean a
Speaker 4: car manufacturer, what would make them want to stop manufacturing cars?
Speaker 4: It's all market based. As long as we have water
Speaker 4: and soil, you know, I can grow whatever the market
Speaker 4: is asking. We don't. I don't grow alfalfa because that's
Speaker 4: what I want to grow. It's that's what the market
Speaker 4: asks for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you. I mean it's all it's all
Speaker 4: based on, you know, paying my bills? What what what
Speaker 4: pays my bills? And right now it's alfalfa. Do you
Speaker 4: have if cotton came back and cotton was was back
Speaker 4: to being king bays that you say, cotton is king
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, cotton was what what the mills wanted,
Speaker 4: what the markets we're calling for? Man would grow cotton.
Speaker 1: I just realized your road is on below road.
Speaker 2: So that's the family. That's the family name.
Speaker 1: Have any homebuilders because when we talked to when we
Speaker 1: talked about Arizona Land, they're talking about well a lot
Speaker 1: of the what is you know, where home builders build
Speaker 1: was formerly agricultural land. Is your area an area in
Speaker 1: which at some point our home builders potentially trying to
Speaker 1: bid on your land? Or is there ever a point
Speaker 1: where the economics in your area could be such that
Speaker 1: a home builder would find more value from it and
Speaker 1: writing you a big check than growing at alfalfa?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's yeah. Right now, we're about ten miles from
Speaker 4: the freeway, and so that's what kind of keeps that
Speaker 4: from happening. But there's a bunch of plans of a
Speaker 4: of a like a reliever freeway coming through our area.
Speaker 4: And I mean it's all about transportation. Right any anywhere,
Speaker 4: it generally relates directly to transportation, and when you're far
Speaker 4: away from a freeway or whatever something that's around you,
Speaker 4: it's all related to that. That's why all of the
Speaker 4: growth has happened around the freeway I Interstate ten, I seventeen,
Speaker 4: I seventeen, or I say two oh two over here.
Speaker 4: It's all based around the one on one the freeways,
Speaker 4: and we're about eight to ten miles off the freeway.
Speaker 4: So if we were right on the freeway, yeah, they'd
Speaker 4: be knocking on the door. But it's all based on transportation.
Speaker 1: So I just have one last question, and I guess
Speaker 1: it's sort of open ended, But we started this about
Speaker 1: all these debates that happened about water use in Arizona. Well,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the one thing that you think
Speaker 1: people are missing big picture when they discuss this, and like,
Speaker 1: what's sort of like the one thing you would like
Speaker 1: more people to understand about the distribution of water in Arizona.
Speaker 4: I guess I said it earlier. Water was never an
Speaker 4: issue until the city got as big as it was.
Speaker 4: We're farming in the state less acres than we've ever farmed,
Speaker 4: We're using less water than we've ever used, and we're
Speaker 4: more efficient than we've ever been. And so as the
Speaker 4: city gets bigger, now water is an issue. As you
Speaker 4: guys talked about earlier, why they're building these chip manufacturing
Speaker 4: plants in Arizona want to build them somewhere, They don't
Speaker 4: have to build them here. We farm here. We farm
Speaker 4: here because this is the only place in the United
Speaker 4: States you can farm like this this in parts of
Speaker 4: central California. That's it. You can't farm like this.
Speaker 1: When you saywhere else, when you say like.
Speaker 4: This year round and produce the quality of crops that
Speaker 4: we produce. I mean, there's things we can't grow here
Speaker 4: but that they grow all over the Midwest, which is
Speaker 4: why they grow them there. I could go farm somewhere
Speaker 4: else by farming a different crop, I guess without Arizona.
Speaker 4: And really the scary one is California. If you ever
Speaker 4: look up how much milk or produce the Central Valley
Speaker 4: California produces. Oh my gosh, if they lose their water,
Speaker 4: everything we eat, vegetable or produce related is going to
Speaker 4: come from another country and it's going to be sprayed
Speaker 4: with every nasty chemical to kill every single bug that
Speaker 4: ever lived so they can sell it to the United
Speaker 4: States because we got rid of all the water or
Speaker 4: the farming in California. That's what scares me. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: love Arizona, it's where I farm, but for the sake
Speaker 4: of our country, California scares me the most. Holy if
Speaker 4: we lose Central Valley farming. But anyways, we've been doing
Speaker 4: this for over one hundred years here and it was
Speaker 4: it never been an issue until the city got really big.
Speaker 1: Trevor Bales of bells Hay Farm really appreciate you coming
Speaker 1: on a really good perspective.
Speaker 4: I thought we're going to talk about alfalfa markets. That's
Speaker 4: what's interesting to me.
Speaker 2: What did we miss on alfalfa markets?
Speaker 4: So most other markets are trackable and have the cotton market,
Speaker 4: the wheat market, the farley market, there's the corn market.
Speaker 4: Alfalfa is like you talk about I want to talk
Speaker 4: about like the wild West of markets. It's I mean,
Speaker 4: it's so similar.
Speaker 3: To the stock market, futures or anything.
Speaker 4: No, there aren't and so like every other like like beef,
Speaker 4: but like everything like alfalfa. So like right now, actually
Speaker 4: we are in a crazy I mean, it's just falling
Speaker 4: like a rock.
Speaker 3: There is an alfalfa producer price in yeah, and so.
Speaker 2: What's going on there?
Speaker 4: The United States has exported its agriculture things for as
Speaker 4: long as once boats were. Once we started shipping stuff
Speaker 4: out of the country, we've been exporting so forever. So
Speaker 4: we export a lot of hay out of the country.
Speaker 4: Those exporters last year and the year before that, for
Speaker 4: some reason, came in swinging real hard, wanting to buy
Speaker 4: a lot of alfalfa. This is all over the country too.
Speaker 4: They buy out like all of the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona.
Speaker 4: They buy a lot. So they came in swinging and
Speaker 4: it they raised the price up. I remember three hundred
Speaker 4: used to be the high number, and this is per Ton. Well,
Speaker 4: I always think of things per Ton. I think, wow, wow,
Speaker 4: that hay was sold for two hundred and eighty five
Speaker 4: dollars a ton. Wow, maybe one day we'll hit three hundred. Wow. Well,
Speaker 4: in less than a year it went from three hundred
Speaker 4: to four hundred dollars a ton, and then it went
Speaker 4: upwards of like three sixty ton or four sixty a ton.
Speaker 4: So it went way up there, which is very high.
Speaker 4: But then this year they came back in and they're
Speaker 4: not buying. Well, everyone got this start off the year
Speaker 4: again with this false thinking it was going to be
Speaker 4: high again. And so I have to buy a lot
Speaker 4: of hay because of the luck we've run a successful
Speaker 4: business and we sell a lot of hay to all
Speaker 4: over the country. All my hay stays local. It doesn't
Speaker 4: get exported. It stays here in the US, and so
Speaker 4: we harvest all our stuff. Then I harvest other people's
Speaker 4: hey and I buy it from them. Well, they are
Speaker 4: looking at what they think the market is the beginning
Speaker 4: of the year, and they're well we think that, you know,
Speaker 4: it's still three three thirty three forty. Okay, So here
Speaker 4: we are in March and April harvesting hay and paying
Speaker 4: three forty for it, three three thirty three forty, and
Speaker 4: then as it's been going, it's just this crazy, uneasy
Speaker 4: nobody knows and you're all these weird numbers, and the
Speaker 4: exporters aren't buying, and all of a sudden, now so
Speaker 4: I purchased Hey two months go for three hundred and
Speaker 4: forty dollars a ton. I think I'm going to purchase
Speaker 4: Hey this month for one hundred and ninety five dollars
Speaker 4: a ton, which I guess if you don't understand, that's
Speaker 4: a huge swing, yeah, in our industry, from one to
Speaker 4: the other. And it's just such an interesting market, I mean,
Speaker 4: especially in the stock market and all the movies you watch,
Speaker 4: like it's it's all about what how, what do you?
Speaker 4: What do you think? What does this guy think? You know?
Speaker 4: Where it doesn't necessarily matter what's really happening, it's what
Speaker 4: is your perception and what does what do people think
Speaker 4: is going to happen? And so everyone starts making decisions
Speaker 4: on what they think is going to happen, and everyone
Speaker 4: thought the market was going to stay high. And I
Speaker 4: mean to see it fall over one hundred dollars a
Speaker 4: ton in a couple of months, I mean, that's that's crazy.
Speaker 1: We needed a nail self futures market. Trevor, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. I'm glad we got that context in the
Speaker 1: sort of the current day of market swing.
Speaker 2: But really appreciate you coming on online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much, Tracy. I
Speaker 2: really like that conversation.
Speaker 1: I mean there was a lot in there, but just
Speaker 1: to start, you know, I like hearing about like the
Speaker 1: technological advantages in irrigation and farming, like now how they
Speaker 1: use lasers to make sure it's like perfectly flat and
Speaker 1: stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Got My husband got one of those to like measure
Speaker 3: hanging pictures on the walls and like terrace slopes and
Speaker 3: things like that, and he will not stop using it.
Speaker 2: It looks very cool measuring the flatness of things.
Speaker 3: A couple things stood out for me. So number one,
Speaker 3: I think people here, oh, why are we farming alfalfa
Speaker 3: in the desert? It makes no sense. But Trevor's point
Speaker 3: about how it's actually easier to cure the alfalfa. Hey,
Speaker 3: that makes a lot of sense to me. It doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily mean it's efficient from a water perspective, but you
Speaker 3: could see why that would be beneficial if you're making
Speaker 3: these giant rolls of dried grass essentially. And then the
Speaker 3: other thing that struck me was, you know this idea
Speaker 3: that a lot of the alfalfa is going to fancy horses. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it does seem like horses kind of escape a lot
Speaker 3: of climate change contribution scrutiny. Right, everyone always talks about
Speaker 3: cows horses.
Speaker 1: Someone is going to some horse person out there is
Speaker 1: going to get really angry.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 3: I think horses are an easier target.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's many of them.
Speaker 1: I don't think there is many of them. I don't
Speaker 1: think there I mean, no offense to Trevor. I don't
Speaker 1: think that and market is as crucial. But you know
Speaker 1: what I think was interesting in a point that he
Speaker 1: made that sort of like helped things click or does
Speaker 1: he point out, you know, like in some places you'll
Speaker 1: get drought, in some places you'll get sometimes you get flooding, right,
Speaker 1: And so really, one thing about one thing that's nice
Speaker 1: about that, it's consistent, it's consistent, it's predictable, right, and
Speaker 1: so it's like, Okay, there are obviously drawbacks, such as
Speaker 1: the fact that there is like you know, the water
Speaker 1: is ambiguous, but you know what you're gonna get, and
Speaker 1: so once you start from that standpoint, like you can
Speaker 1: like get every on every other metric, Arizona is very
Speaker 1: efficient for these crops.
Speaker 3: Totally, And that was a perspective that we hadn't really
Speaker 3: heard before. But again it's one of those things like, Okay,
Speaker 3: it made sense for a long time, but as the
Speaker 3: cities developed, to Trevor's point, as we build these semiconductor factories,
Speaker 3: it does feel like decisions, tough decisions might need to
Speaker 3: be made.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, like maybe the answer is
Speaker 1: to keep Arizona an agricultural powerhouse and not continue to
Speaker 1: spread Phoenix as far as I can see, like we
Speaker 1: sort of like, oh, everyone's moving to Phoenix, therefore we
Speaker 1: need less agriculture. But it is good to get the
Speaker 1: perspective of the people in the agriculture and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but why does Phoenix need to just keep growing in
Speaker 1: all directions.
Speaker 3: Or move the fabs elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Or move the fabs elsewhere?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right. Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 3: Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Check out the instagram of our guests Tres. Check out
Speaker 2: at bails.
Speaker 1: Hey on Instagram, where he makes lots of interesting videos
Speaker 1: about LFLFA farming in Arizona. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez
Speaker 1: at Carmen Arman and dash Oll Bennett at dashbod. And
Speaker 1: check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the
Speaker 1: handle at podcasts, and for more odd Laws content, go
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where we have transcripts,
Speaker 1: a blog, and.
Speaker 2: A newsletter that comes out every Friday.
Speaker 1: And check out our discord where you can chat twenty
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Speaker 1: There's even a water channel.
Speaker 2: In there, and I'm sure we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 2: this episode.
Speaker 1: Go to discord dot gg slash Outlaws.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, stood in in