SharkFarmerXM's podcast
Bob Delmore from Colorado 6-28-24
Unstoppable. Unshakable. But it rolls off the town. Unbreakable. It's unavoidable. You're so relatable. Re-between the lines. Start to loosen up your mind. And welcome again to Shark Farmer Radio. Hey, I'm your host Rob Sharky. We're in the studio today just outside of Bradford, Illinois. Studio powered by Beck's Eyebread. We will be free of debate talk. So if you're sick of hearing about the debate all morning, this is a show for you. Yeah, we don't normally talk politics, and we're definitely staying out of politics today. No kidding. My gosh. I did enjoy that last night though. That was fun. I just say that. I wanted to hear about the report today, the government report today. And I'm sure if you're listening to the station, you've heard plenty about that. But I couldn't even find it because everything's about the debate. I was just like, all right. We're not going to talk about good stuff, fun stuff. We are home today and it's raining. I'll have to say I'm a little happy about that. The crops are looking good near us. Yeah. Around us. I hate to say I have a 30% chance of rain and it's rain all day. And yes, we are home where you're not traveling this week. But we were out in Oklahoma City at the American Meat Science Association meeting. Oh gosh. Two weeks ago, I guess, already. And we got to meet so many amazing meat scientists. And that's how we found our guests for today. Yeah, it was an incredible, incredible, incredible meeting. But today we're going to talk with Bob Delmore. Now he is a professor at Colorado State for the Department of Animal Science. How you doing, Bob? I'm doing excellent. You are out there in Colorado State originally from California. Is that right? Yes, sir. And so like I said, we can joke about that two ways, but I don't want to spend too much time. I grew up in California, but I got introduced to agriculture in a junior college and the world of agriculture was kind enough to embrace me because I did not grow up. I'm not a fifth generation farmer. I'm a first generation meathead and I did not grow up in agriculture, but I have a deep appreciation and fondness for it. I'm curious. I mean, what was the trigger? What was it in junior college that made you make a turn to ag? Because I saw an opportunity for me and that for me, it was about livestock and the aspect of converting them into a carcass, which just in my head made sense. And then while I was in junior college, I worked for a small meat plant and all of a sudden, I found something that was a hook for me. And it was a lot. Once I found a hook, it was good because in junior college, I learned how to drink, which is not a very marketable skill. And so I appreciated the opportunity. But the people have always been very welcoming and I remind people that all the time who say, well, they're not. I say, no, they're very welcoming. I mean, I was a kid from suburb in California and I've had multiple opportunities and a couple of different careers. And so I appreciated it. I enjoy it. My daughters are interested in going that way. One of my oldest daughter was a state officer. She just got back from studying abroad. You know, kids have been in 4-H. And so it's been an important part of our life. And I'm looking forward to, you know, the careers that they take. Well, I'm glad to hear that because, you know, sometimes people outside of agriculture, you know, try to learn about or come into ag. We use so many terms. We talk farmeries and sometimes it's, I don't know, if like I was hanging around a bunch of physicists or something like that, I'd probably be, I would probably just walk out of the room. Well, it bring up a good point because I had a long discussion with some students in the spring semester and maybe I was a little bit overzealous about it that you have to know the terms. And so if I have one more person, you know, tell me that a steer is a male cow, I'm going to lose my mind. And silly, but it's important because what we do and, you know, livestock, it's important. Just like if you're growing soybeans, you're growing soybeans. And if you're growing corn, you're growing corn. And so the language is important and we remind, remind our students, you know, all the time to have an appreciation for that. And when you're going to go talk to folks, you know, if you're, I got to go to school in Nebraska. And so the first thing I learned about Nebraska is start talking about the weather, start talking about corn, and then, you know, start talking about the Huskers. And if you do those three things, you know, you're going to be invited back. Yeah, Renza too. Yes, absolutely. Well, you must have loved it because you have a PhD, so you went through so much schooling to do what you do. How long have you been a professor at Colorado State? So I've been in Colorado State for 10 years, going on 11 years, and I did nine years at another university in California. So yeah, I've been doing this teaching thing for a while. I did start off in industry. I did six years for a company called Farmer John that's in California. And they're now, the brand is now owned by Smithfield and sadly, the plant that was in Los Angeles actually burned in California. The plant has been taken down. But yeah, I've been doing this for a while and the teaching thing is a lot of fun. The students, students are the best part. The students are absolutely the best part. They have the students. Have they changed over the years? Yeah, well, we joke about that all the time. The fact is, is I've changed. After COVID, I took off the mask and all of a sudden everything was gray and I'm convinced the masks are the cause. But I, you know, you have a different perspective. They're coming off of dealing with, you know, being online and all that nonsense. It has slowed them down a little bit. I mean, I like to believe each semester we're kind of stepping back into it. I'm lucky that I have, you know, I have 35 of them that work in the facilities that we operate as part of our teaching activities. And so we have 35 young people that work in a meat plant on the campus. And so I'm lucky because I'm surrounded by kids that really are interested and want to do this. So that part of the job is very good. All right. Very, very cool story coming up. The next two segments we're going to talk about beef sticks for backpacks program. This, I find fascinating. And we've talked about the food insecurity before in that. And now we're going to talk to Bob, who actually knows what he's talking about. And a meat plant in a university. So cool. Every university should have a meat plant. Absolutely. We're talking with Bob Delmore. Now he is a professor at Colorado State. We'll be back right after the break. A ground shaker, a rule breaker. Holds on him, roll you through every acre. This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell, or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way. Go to commonground.io. That's commonground.io. All right, this weekend on Rural Radio Channel 147. That's this station you're listening to right now. The shark farmer weekend edition, we have a Brian Clark. Now this is, we stepped outside of Ag in farming. Yes, but this guy was in the south second tower, which I think was the south one, one of the plain hit on September 11th. Yes, fantastic. The wing of that one cricket, the wing actually went through the floor that he was on. Yeah, they talk about that plane, you know, the plane actually thinking that it was going to miss and turning a little bit. And sure enough, that was his floor. So, and he got out and the story is phenomenal. Each floor of that tower was an acre. I didn't realize it was, I know they're huge, but I didn't realize it was that big. It definitely puts it in terms that a farmer can understand, right? Yeah. You could picture an acre pretty darn easy. Plus, we have PBS on tomorrow night, Saturday night at 830 central on WTVP. And you can catch that online after. But Brianna and her husband, the Elies, from just here close to us in Bradford. Yeah, really. Talking about farming together, he's lost a family member unexpectedly came back to the farm. Fantastic story, really neat couple. And they are just about ready to have their first baby. All right. Today though, we're talking with Bob Delmore. Now he is, he's a professor. They're a Colorado state. They're in the Department of Animal Science. Bob, you're giving us your background, but let's switch gears. Tell me about the beef sticks for backpack program. Absolutely. About five years ago, a guy named Jordan Levy and his wife, Shannon, they created a charity and they called it beef sticks for backpacks. And Jordan came to us at the university because we have a facility on campus where we do teaching, research, and outreach as it relates to meat processing and food processing, but a lot of meat processing. And Jordan said, we got one in seven kids in the state of Colorado that are food insecure. And I want you guys to make us some beef sticks every week, like a Slim Jim product, right? Beef sticks. And I want to be able to take those and put them in the backpack programs that are created throughout the state to give kids extra food on the weekends. And I said, yeah, no, thank you. That's not a good fit for us. It's too hard. We can't do it. And so the next week, we started working on a formula for him. And we devised a formula. And we started producing beef sticks in a small environment because it's a small facility. And he partnered up with some other folks. And all of a sudden, we had some equipment that was necessary for the project. We had the industry providing raw materials, in this case, which is meat or trimmings, casings, corrugated packaging. And we started to grow and expand this thing. And we moved up to a thousand sticks. And then, you know, a few months later, we were at 5,000. And so right now we do about 21, 22,000 beef sticks each week for various charities throughout the state of Colorado. And these folks put together bags of food throughout the week. And those backpacks or bags have four to six shelf stable meals in it for the kids. Because during the week, kids that are food insecure, they get meals at school, which is great for being reduced meals at school. But on the weekends, you know, some of these kids really struggle. And so these charities have done a great job of putting the bags together. And the bags have tuna finished and they have shelf stable milk and, you know, pasta and other things. But they're heavy in carbohydrates and light in protein. And they're light in protein. This is protein cost money. So we were able to at least add a beef stick into there, which is eight grams of protein, shelf stable. Those kids get an additional amount of protein, which they need. We could do an entire segment on what happens to kids that are deficient in not only food, but certainly in protein. And then at the same time, my students that are working in our facility, they're getting to make products from the beginning process, receiving all the way to the finished process. And they're getting paid to do that. So they're learning by doing and they're getting to give back at the same time. This is a pretty cool deal and the three different groups, the industry, academia, and the charities working together. And this is not necessarily three groups of people that work together every day. I love this whole program. And we've talked about food insecurity so much because, you know, you kind of get in your own bubble and you don't realize, you know, you said 300,000 kids is what it comes down to in your area in Colorado. Go hungry on the weekends. And, you know, for so many of us, we're like, really, that is a phenomenal amount of kids that aren't getting fed. But, you know, we learned that several years ago, our town of Bradford started a backpack program and they were, oh my goodness, they had like 100 kids signed up and we were shocked. And it really brings home that so many small communities or big cities, kids who live in the city, go hungry on the weekends and to have protein like that. Because you're right, so many of those backpacks are so full of, you know, high carb Doritos. Yeah, the idea of packing a meat stick, it gets on the protein they need. It's so exciting that you're doing this program. Well, you know, there's other thing we like, obviously, this is Colorado. This is beef country. We've had really good support. You know, obviously, the charity gets lots of good support and we get support of the raw materials coming in. And so what it allows us to do is it allows us to make those get a very competitive price because most of the items are donated. And so that's new and we manufacture it. We get through all 64 counties, you know, in the state of Colorado. We've got folks that work with us on the distribution, which is important. One of our neighboring states has started a similar program, although they're working with, you know, a company and we're a university that does it. So we try to remind the students every day that this is, you know, this is important when you hear some of the stories about the, you know, the kids and the way that, you know, sometimes people say that, you know, the only snack they're getting or the food that they're getting is between the beer aisle and the front of the store on the weekend. And that's not very, you know, that's not nutrition. And when you listen to some of these teachers, you know, for the kids that are short of food, you know, Monday morning, they're dragging their heads are down. And we need to break that circle. And I'm certain, you know, expert in it, but clearly, kids don't have a choice in this. And that's the beautiful thing is that this isn't political because these are kids and kids don't have that choice. So I love the fact that I'm not in politics in this. My job is to help students prepare items that meet all the safety requirements, meet the, you know, government labeling requirements. And at the same time, they learn. So these kids that are putting their way through the school, they're making a couple of bucks working in our facility. And, you know, we pay competitively for a university student job. Yeah, I remember being upset. The first time I heard about this program, because I'm like, you know, they you get fed every day at school. Now we've got to feed them in a weekend. But you hit it exactly right, Bob. It's not the kids fault. I mean, they've, yeah, anyway, we could talk about that. It's a whole nother show. But yes, we do got to go to break. Today, we're talking with Bob Delmore. Now he is a professor at Colorado State in the Department of Animal Science. Yeah, I'm not done talking about this. I've got a lot of questions. I think it's a fantastic program. Maybe throw some pork in there for an old hog farmer. We'll be back right after the break. This segment is brought to you by Common Ground. Are you looking for an easy way to buy, sell, or lease your land? Well, check out Common Ground where they connect landowners and farmers and hunters too, by the way, go to commonground.io. That's commonground.io. All right, it's time for America's and meat eaters favorite rodeos segments. Where in the world is well? Well, what do you have for us today? Today I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado. Fort Collins is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Larimer County, Colorado. Learning is fun. Yep, the city is the fourth most populous city in Colorado, situated on the La Cache. The Cache Le Pojre River along the Colorado Front Range. Did he say that? Did he say that right, Bob? No. Let's pretend I did. Feel free. Feel free to crack him. My mom told me to not never interrupt people. Yeah, Emily. You got a good mom. Fort Collins was founded as a military outpost of the United States Army in 1864. It succeeded a previous encampment known as Camp Collins on the river that I mispronounced earlier. Near what is known today as La Porte. Fort Collins gained a reputation as a very conservative city in the 20th century with prohibition of alcoholic beverages, a contentious political issue in the town's early decades. Being retained from the late 1890s until student activism helped bring it to an end in 1969. The students did it. Yeah, they needed their libations. During that same period, civil rights activism and anti-war disturbances heightened tensions in the city, including the burning of several buildings on the CSU campus. But there are many notable people from Fort Collins. I have to get into these. Fine folks, Frank Cady, repertory cast member on sketch comedy series mad tv. Repertory. I liked mad tv. Yeah, I don't remember which one Frank was. What's either heavier one? I don't, his Wikipedia didn't have a picture. Oh, okay. All right, fair enough. So I can't say, but opera singer Joy Davidson is from Fort Collins, as well as American former powerlifter Lamar Gant. They run the gamut, don't they? Right. He competed with idiopathic scoliosis. I'm going to ignore that because I don't know what it is. Ross Marquand, actor best known for portraying Aaron in The Walking Dead and Jake Lloyd, actor of young Aniskin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode 1. As well as Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Academy Award for her role as Mamie and Gone with the Wind. That's a good one. You should check that out. And in addition to acting, she recorded 16 blues sides between 26 and 29 and was a radio performer and television personality, the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. The triple threat, wouldn't you? Yeah. Lastly, we got John Williams Stevenson, the drummer, main songwriter, and only constant member of the California punk rock group The Descendants. Okay, he said a guy with three names, I thought for sure knowing Will that he was like a serial killer. Right. In late December 1981, he played a few concerts with the seminal punk band Black Flag because their drummer Robo was detained in England after a tour there. He went on to record with Black Flag on several of their albums until '85, including The Highly Influential My War. Oh, okay. All right. Well, thank you, Will. Today, we are talking with Bob Delmore. Now, he is a professor at Colorado State in the Department of Animal Science. Did you learn anything, Bob? No, I appreciate that, you know, I mean, if somebody asked me a useless four-column trivia for a thousand, I have all the will. The only question you forgot, Will, is our one of our most famous faculty members from Colorado State University. And you got to read farther down the Wikipedia page, which is Dr. Temple Grandin. I haven't heard about Dr. Grandin before, but very, very famous animal person who works with a movement of animals, how we move animals through slaughter facilities, had a movie made about her, and she has happened to be autistic. She won an award from PETA, or some animal rights group. She has won everything. That's for another conversation, but they just put out a second movie on Dr. Grandin. So, I'm still waiting for my first, and she's got two. Uh-huh. You know, I was in a Manitoba airport, and I was walking down the alley. There she was, sitting there, just sitting there. I was too intimidated. I didn't even go up and say hi. I just, I just walked by. I was. I was totally starstruck. But anyway, all right, Bob, so getting back to the beef sticks for backpack, something you said earlier in the other segment we've heard from teachers, these kids that maybe are not being tended to, like we think kids should be tended to on a weekend, not getting fed like kids should. They go back to school, and we for a teacher say, like even Monday's morning a shot, other teachers say all of Monday's shot. Some teachers say you go well into Tuesday before they start kind of getting back into it. It really holds these kids back. It does, and when we talk to, we've had some teachers come through tours that have been associated with packing or going and building these bags, and they affirm how critically important it is that obviously the performance drops, but they can just see it in the kids. They do a great job of providing a lot of, you know, snacks, etc. But they need help on a constant basis. And so the teachers are really good. I talked to one of the gentlemen who runs the program, and he says, you know, the teachers will, you know, give them the high sign and say, hey, you know what, we need to have, you know, a few more bags assigned to us. They do it in the summertime also. They have some distribution in libraries, and those teachers are a great resource for identifying where we need to get some additional help. So we depend on them. The information that we get is that the kids dive into the bag and pull the stick out right away, and like kids do, start eating it right away, which, you know, does, it does our heart good. And we're proud of it because if you look at the packaging, it just looks like something you'd find in the convenience store. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't say government cheese on the outside of it. It's, it just says, you know, what it is, it's a beef stick, and it's got, you know, a son on it from Colorado, and, you know, it's got some logos on it, and it helps. We're not solving it. I wish we had the solution. I don't. The demand is up. Unfortunately, they keep asking us to produce more, which is a real bummer, quite frankly, that the demand keeps going up. But between the prices that they're having to pay for food, which are tough, and the demand, these people work very hard to put these programs together. Well, and you've done 2,300, 314,000 sticks so far with partners like Colorado Cattleman, Colorado Livestock Association, your university, five rivers, cattle feeding, kids pack. I mean, wow, you've really like partnered with some great people. So we love what you're doing. Where do we go to find out more if people want to go on your website? Yeah, so beef sticks for backpacks. If you just, you know, if you just search beef sticks for backpacks, they've got a great website. They've got opportunities on there. You know, obviously if people are interested in supporting that program, we also sell caddies, you know, yes. So we are running up against the break, Bob. Thank you so much. And thanks for all you do. Truly, truly appreciate it. Don't go anywhere, Sean Haney's coming up next.