(lively music) - Hello and welcome to "Farm Connections."

I'm your host, Dan Hoffman.

On today's episode, we discuss farm transition with Aaron Keenan, John Garry of the DCA discusses how his organization helps new businesses.

And the University of Minnesota provides us a new Best Practices segment.

All here today, on "Farm Connections."

(bright music) - [Announcer] Welcome to "Farm Connections," with your host, Dan Hoffman.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] "Farm Connections" made possible in part by... - [Announcer] Minnesota Corn, working to identify and promote opportunities for corn growers, enhance quality of life, and help others understand the value and importance of corn production to America's economy.

(bright music) - [Announcer] EDP Renewables North America, owner-operator of Prairie Star and Pioneer Prairie Wind Farms in Minnesota and Iowa.

EDPR wind farms and solar parks provide income to farmers and help power rural economies across the continent.

- [Announcer] R&S Grain Systems, a family-owned business, serving its customers for 50 years with leading designs in the manufacturing of grain handling equipment and grain storage systems.

You can call 'em for a quote today.

(lively music) Mower County Farm Bureau Association advocates for agriculture based on the policies and beliefs of its members.

It's dedicated to making the voices of its members stronger.

You can learn more about membership benefits at FBMN.org.

- Welcome back to "Farm Connections."

We're in Southern Minnesota and with us today is John Garry, the CEO and President of the Development Corporation of Austin.

Thanks for taking time to share with us.

- You bet, Dan.

- What is the DCA?

- Development Corporation of Austin, where, many people would call it Economic Development Organization, we're a nonprofit that supports businesses or some institutions in the area, Austin and Mower County, through a variety of ways.

I mean, we do a lot of different things, but most people would think of it as a organization that helps recruit businesses to the community, an organization that would help businesses that are already here grow, and then help with entrepreneurs.

Those are some of the main things we do traditionally.

- John, why is that important?

- Well, you could think of your household budget.

It's nice to have money coming in.

It's the same for a community or a county or a state, any region.

You want to support businesses that help the money churn within your community, but then also bring some funds in from the outside.

So, we're hoping that our activities help support that.

- John, you have a lot of work to do and a lot of reach.

How do you leverage and what other organizations do you work with?

- Yeah, DCA has two subsidiary nonprofits.

So, DCA is kind of the head of it.

But then we have a branch that does community development work, called Austin Community Charitable Fund.

It has a program called Impact Austin that focuses on quality of life.

And then, Launch Austin Community Growth Ventures, that's the other subsidiary nonprofit we have.

They focus on innovation, education, entrepreneurship.

- Many communities see ebb and flows, and this community is no different than others, whether it's some kind of outside force that's been negative or something that isn't good.

We've also seen good things happen and Development Corporation has been a large part of the good things that happened.

What are some success stories you can think of?

- Yeah, one of the most recent things we've done in a big project is the Nu-Tek Biosciences project.

They're located in Austin in our business park, $46 million investment, about 35 jobs, good paying jobs.

And the beauty of it is that they really are complimentary to our local industry, food industry, the egg industry, and especially the Hormel Institute.

They're involved in the biopharmaceutical industry, and that's really largely why they picked Austin.

- That's amazing, and of course, your organization and you were very instrumental early days.

Can you share anything about that?

- Well, it's fun to think back on, but usually, that's the truth when things go so well.

When Nu-Tek visited Austin, they were interested in Austin at a high level, but they were looking at numerous communities.

Honestly, I think what clinched it for them more than others, they like Minnesota, they're from Minnesota, but additionally, when they met the folks at the Hormel Institute, world class scientists, probably their highest priority was to be in a non-metro area that had world-class science.

And it was funny, 'cause when they first met the institute and a couple scientists there, it was such an instant natural click that I barely really had to facilitate anything.

By the time we were leaving, we joke about it now, he was telling me all the reasons he wanted to be in Austin instead of me telling him all the reasons to be in Austin.

It never goes better than that.

(laughs) That's about as good as it gets.

- However, you had to be ready for that event, and there's many events before that that didn't go quite like that.

- Oh yeah, yeah, in economic development, it's like sales in general.

I mean, the vast majority of your attempts to pull something together end up not working out.

There's many options.

It's highly competitive.

And I could tell you many stories of projects that we got involved with, and we maybe made a short list but ultimately missed out on, and sometimes it's even harder to understand why you didn't get it.

But I think that's a reminder as to why we look at really complimentary businesses that are looking to relocate, 'cause there needs to be something more than just the bottom line as to why they picked there.

They're looking at a 15, 25 year decision, so they want to know, "Is this gonna make sense "for us for the long haul, not for like three years "of tax incentives or something like that."

- You mentioned the Hormel Institute.

Our audience may need a little more elaborate discussion about what that is.

- Yeah, the Hormel Institute is part of the University of Minnesota.

They partner closely with Mayo and other major research institutes, but they do, I think, primarily cancer research.

But a large part, you could just think of a biomedical institute.

They have world-class scientists, world-class equipment and facilities, groundbreaking research.

Another aspect of it, so it's a town of 25,000, 26,000 in Austin, to have world-class people like that be active in the community, Dr. Bob Clark, who leads the institute, has really made it a priority "to not be in the ivory tower," he always says, but to make sure that the community is part of the institute, and the institute's part of the community, and they do that on a daily basis.

- Well, they've certainly expanded both facilities, research equipment, and outreach into the world.

When you work with the Hormel Institute, I think they're also funded by a similar organization as you, correct?

- Yeah, they get a lot of support from the Hormel Foundation.

Hormel Foundation owns about 46% of Hormel Foods Corporation.

So it's a unique arrangement that is a really incredibly unique asset for Austin and the Mower County area, because it's a Fortune 500 company.

And to have a foundation that gets its funding or revenue from dividends of a successful company like Hormel, the sky is really the limit to where this community could go with the support of the Hormel Foundation.

They support our organization through Austin Community Growth Ventures.

We have another organization that they support and but the Hormel Institute, and the list could go on.

I mean, the support they give Austin Recreation Center, they got a $25 million grant from there.

It's an incredible asset.

I mean, we're the envy of many, many rural communities when they look at having Hormel Foods and the Hormel Foundation and the Hormel Institute in one town of our size.

- Well, it took some leadership way back when and somebody having a vision of putting this foundation together to work with the corporate side, the food production side, but also, the research side.

Imagine if research comes out that solves the cancer problem.

- Oh yeah, I mean, I think there's already research going on that is certainly highly recognized around the world.

But another part of that partnership is they have equipment that you just would not even dream of finding in many of these places.

And a lot of it, the blend of talent that the institute has with the equipment that the institute can afford is part of what draws that world-class talent in here is to use the equipment that's here as well.

- John, we've got plenty of examples of people that produce protein meats, or meat proteins that aren't in business anymore.

We've got plenty of examples of businesses that didn't go well.

Here, we've got a company that invests back into their community, invests back into their people.

How common is that?

- Well, part of what the foundation brings, I think, to the table with the company is this, when you have a controlling portion of ownership of a huge company like that, they can take a longer view than a lot of companies can on a quarterly basis or even an annual basis and really look long term what makes sense business-wise without that added pressure of producing results right now or else.

So I think you look back over decades and that kind of stability has really helped Hormel Foods grow to be the Fortune 500 company it is.

They're also way diversified beyond what they traditionally did, plant proteins and salsas, I mean, peanut butter, peanuts.

They're well beyond what anybody would've envisioned even probably 30 or 40 years ago.

- Obviously, you've had lots of stress and lots of projects that didn't go as well as we hoped, but you've had some good ones too.

On Friday night when you go home, and it's a good week, what would that week look like?

- (sighs) You know, this is probably not exactly what you're asking, but part of what I love about Austin is it's big enough where you have incredible diversity here, really worldwide, people from all over the world live in Austin, Minnesota, and I love that about Austin, Minnesota.

But it's also small enough where you actually bump into these people on a daily basis or a weekly basis.

And I think that combination of that diversity and the wonderful people, beautiful people who live here, and that it's also a size where this isn't Minneapolis, this isn't the Twin Cities, this is Austin, and you actually see the people, whether it be at the grocery store or walking down Main Street.

And I think that really gives people hope, helps people feel that human connection.

And on a Friday, if that happened during the week, I'm usually gonna feel pretty good about it.

- Great story.

John, thanks for the work you do, Development Corporation of Austin.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Dan.

- Stay tuned for more on "Farm Connections."

(bright music) - [Announcer] "Farm Connection's," Best Practices, brought to you by AbsoluteEnergy and AgVantage Software.

- Well, I'm Ryan Miller, a crops extension educator with the University of Minnesota, and this is today's Best Practices segment.

Today in this segment, we're gonna talk a little bit about evaluating our herbicide or weed management program within our crops for the season.

And the importance with this time of year, when we get into July, to get out there and really do some evaluation on how things worked and where we had some misses.

All right, so when we're evaluating our weed control, we wanna look for weeds, and then this can help us determine what might be going on.

So, it could be something related to the weed management program we picked, or it could be some other external factor.

So, maybe we had a application error where the sprayer wasn't functioning properly.

Maybe we ran outta spray or there was a tip plugged, some kind of factor outside of what we actually chose.

And so, those are things we can tune into and correct for seasons to come, but also, not be misled into doing and majorly changing our program because of these kind of external factors.

But when we do start to see failures or escapes, misses, we might call 'em, it's important to identify what species we're seeing.

Sometimes there may be an issue developing, like herbicide resistance.

There could be a situation where we've been using the same program too much and we see a shift in weed species, so it could be a new weed for us.

There's also the opportunity where we may have introduced a species to our farm through an animal manure or maybe a cover crop seed or some other input that we put on that led to a new weed problem.

I'm thinking of Palmer amaranth in this case.

So, that has happened in Minnesota and certainly something to be tuned into.

Now if you don't have the confidence to identify a weed species by yourself, it's important to rely on or send pictures to a trusted agronomic advisor or maybe someone at the university, like myself.

I know frequently, we get later in the season, I'll start to get pictures, either via email or text message on, "Hey, I think I've got this weed," or, "What is this weed?"

And we can certainly help you identify what weed you might be seeing.

So that's the first step is to figure out what species you're seeing.

The second step is to go out and to create some maps, so keep track of where you're seeing the species, and it's just gonna be important because it can help you key into that location as years tick past and crop seasons tick past, you can focus on what might be happening in that area.

It also will allow you to beef up or maybe change up your management strategy for that location, so it can let you better target maybe a more robust herbicide plant, or maybe it's just some hand roguing of the fields.

So, that's another important consideration when you're out doing this scouting.

Oftentimes, you can pull up plants and rogue them out, and limit how much seed production they're gonna have and how much they're gonna add back into that weed seed bank, which will pay you dividends into the future, because you'll have less potential weed density going forward, so important to do some of that too.

Well again, I'm Ryan Miller, crops extension educator at the University of Minnesota, and that was today's Best Management Practice.

Thanks for listening.

- Welcome to "Farm Connections."

We travel to Austin, Minnesota in the office of the Austin Community Growth Ventures, and with me as the director, Aaron Keenan.

Aaron, thanks for joining us today.

- Nice to see you, Dan.

- Absolutely.

And what happens here?

- Well actually, we're in our co-working space, and this is one of the places that we use to help support the businesses in the local area.

- Well, what do you do as Director of Austin Community Growth Ventures and what's your purpose?

- Yeah, it's an interesting role.

We get involved in a lot of different stuff.

Really, our main focus is focusing on education, advancing science and agriculture, and working with jobs.

And that takes us into all kinds of different realms, working with different businesses around the community, working with government in the community, working with anybody that's looking to start or have a business, so we do a lot of different things to help support them and then focus on those three areas that I just alluded to, which is in advancing science and agriculture, working with education and jobs.

So, we do a lot of educational programs to help support those.

- Aaron, that's a lot of difficult, high-level tasks.

What's your background?

- Yeah, I have a varied background.

I've worked for big organizations.

I've worked as an engineer for General Motors.

I've worked at Mayo Clinic.

I've also started and ran five different businesses myself, so got a lot of different diversity on my background, and it helps.

We also employ a lot of other consultants that work with us through small business development center that helps businesses as well.

- So on Friday night, when you go home from work, what makes you happy about the week that just ended?

What's a success story?

- Oh, I think partly is when we get to see a business succeed or change or move in a direction that helps 'em.

And we do a lot of different programming where we help either start up a new business, or we work with a business to help 'em grow, or we work with a business to help 'em transition.

So, any of those things at the end of the week where you've seen some change or growth in those areas is always nice to see.

- And of course, when you break your job down into a week, that's just a micro sense of the whole thing, because you've got a lot of balls in the air, you're working on a lot of projects.

Some of them are maybe multi-year.

- Yeah, we have a rotational education program that we use, which goes throughout the year.

We do big trainings every quarter.

We focus a lot on business succession transitions in first quarter, then we go into some kind of how to start a business in the second quarter.

Then we do into some kind of technical education in the third quarter, whether it be how to use social media or use AI in their business, and then we go into the fourth quarter where we really focus on goals for next year.

So that's kind of our rotational things.

And this year, we're actually, for our business succession transition is focusing on multi-generational farm transitions as they're just a business just like any other business.

- And you've got some partners, no doubt.

- Oh yes, and that program, we've got some great partners.

With that program, we're working with Riverland Community College is gonna be one of our educators.

We're working with the University of Minnesota, Outreach Office, Mower County is a great partner with us in a lot of different programming that we do.

And we're also working with SMIF, Southeastern Minnesota Initiative Foundation as well, so all those came together to help put this program on.

- Well it's an important piece of Mower County, Minnesota, and the upper Midwest.

How is it significant in the Austin community to be involved with farms?

- Well, I mean, it's huge.

I mean, if you look at the geographical region in Mower County, it's surrounded by farms.

Not only is it surrounded by farms, but one of our largest employer here is producing our pork and distributes all over the world.

So, farming is huge in this community.

I mean, if you even look around all of the different aspects of business, we had a new business come to town, Nu-Tek.

Why did they come to our town?

It fit with all of our advancing science with the agriculture in the area, so it's a huge part of our economic development and focus for this community.

- Aaron, by now, the audience is, you know, their interest is high.

They may be interested in knowing more about the organization.

Do you have a website you can share?

- Yeah, our main website, we don't actually promote Austin Community Growth Ventures, but we have this space, it's called launchaustinmn.com.

So really, what that is, is it has all of our programming, all the different stuff that we do.

You can go there and actually look at all the different stuff, whether you want membership to work here or to spend at the coworking space, or you wanna look at the programming we do, it's all right there on the website.

- There's many people who would love to have their own business, and it's difficult to start, it's difficult to launch, shall we say?

- Yeah.

- And then it's difficult to sustain, and then it's difficult to transition.

So you do a lot of that.

How would you approach a person that came to you and said, "Aaron, what resources do you have?

"How can I start my business?"

- Yeah, I mean, everyone comes in with maybe a little bit different type of business.

I think one of the things that we do first is we do an intake assessment of what are they trying to, where they're at, or do they need to create their entity, do they have a business plan, what resources do they have?

So we do intake, and then we have different mechanisms that we use to do that, whether it's direct counseling, we can do that, where we just sit one-on-one with them.

We also have a service called Small Business Development Center.

It's a free counseling service where you can sign up for that you can actually connect with multiple different counselors in all aspects of your business, all the way from drawing a business plan to helping you with social media, helping you with financial questions, all those different aspects that we do.

So we really have a very hands-on approach.

We use our different resources to do more one-on-one mentoring than anything, and then we do educational programs as well.

- Extremely valuable and a nice place to do it in that's away from some of the other noise in the world.

- Correct.

- And some great experience that you bring with not only launching your own business, but also consulting with many others.

That's a rare thing really, and then to be objective, you bring a lot to the table.

Have you got grants or funding sometimes that might help?

- Yeah, we get a lot of our funding, thank goodness, (indistinct) from the Hormel Foundation, so we get a lot of that, that keeps our operation.

The DCA actually helps contribute some of our funding for our Small Business Development Center.

Small Business Development Center's actually get some of their funding through the state too, through support, through the Small Business Administration.

We've also gotten grants and stuff through the county.

The county's helped us with a lot of different programming as well that we do to support our businesses with, whether it be forgivable loans, grants, different stuff from that aspect.

So, the county's been a huge partner with a lot of the stuff that we do as well.

- What's their motivation for doing that?

- Yeah, again, I don't like putting words in people's mouth, but I think what we talk about is they've seen value what we bring.

I mean, obviously, I think a lot of... Trish Herron, she's very much, I guess a supporter of businesses.

She understands that a lot of the revenue and the importance of business in the community, not only for ensuring a vibrant community, but also it's a huge tax base for the community.

Farms and businesses are one of the largest tax bases that they have, so supporting them and making sure they're vibrant that supports the community is a huge benefit for that.

- Well said.

When you wanted to put together the Farm Transition Plan, you mentioned some partners.

What did the county do?

- Well, the county's gonna be giving us some dollars to help support a grant program, actually, that we're gonna implement.

I don't wanna give away all the details on that, but anytime we try to do educational events, like this Multi-Generational Farm Transition that's coming up in March, I always like call-to-actions where, when they come to someone and learn something, I want them to go away and do something.

So we're gonna incentivize with this grant program to hopefully have the farmers and the people that attend, go actually execute on these plans.

- Inform, educate, implement, execute, move forward, right?

- Correct.

- It's a nice plan.

You also work with Riverland Community College and the Farm Business Management program.

Anything you can expand on there?

- Yeah, Lynn Hoffman's gonna talk about how Riverland can actually support the local farmers around this.

And again, we always want to talk about different resources that they have in the community, 'cause we're not the only resource, there's tons of resources to be able to help people.

So we really thought partnering with Riverland Community College will actually give another resource for this group of people that are incoming to actually be able to reach out to.

- Wonderful leverage, and once they go to your transition program and learn about the conversation there, they could work with Lynn Hoffman or somebody else in farm management to begin that implementation, and then they have a mentoring-coaching program there as well.

- They do, yeah, so it's gonna be a good partnership.

And then you've got Smith as well, where they have the Acres of Good, they're gonna come talk about that.

So if you don't have maybe someone you can pass your farm off, what are some other options that exist out there for farmers to be able to support that type of a transition.

- Excellent.

For a business guy, you seem to have a passion and understanding of agriculture.

Does that go back to anything in your roots or your past?

- Yeah, I grew up, my grandfather had a very large farm.

I grew up around that in the summers.

I spent a lot of time in Iowa, detasseling, walking beans, planting, doing a lot of different stuff.

And you know, I'm actually really passionate about this, generational farming is, you know, when my grandfather retired, we never had a conversation about what they were gonna do with the farm.

It was just, I went into the military and later it was sold.

So yeah, I have some passion around this.

I think it's something that supporting farmers and how they transition I think is a great thing to support them, to have the conversation and what they do with their property.

- And that's really what's necessary, is a conversation and include as many people as you can to move it forward.

- Correct, yeah.

- Aaron, wonderful conversation.

That website, one more time please.

- Yeah, it's launchaustinmn.com.

- I hope our audience goes to it and learns more and engages with you.

- [Aaron] Yep, I do too.

- Thank you so much for your time.

- Yep, thank you.

- Well, that just about does it here for today's episode of "Farm Connections."

I'm Dan Hoffman.

Thank you for joining us.

(bright music) (lively music)