Newsman to rancher, an hour with Bill Kurtis -Encore

today's kbr prisons was originally broadcast on may twenty seven two thousand twelve so the it's what's for dinner that is that he's making as bad or i'm kate mcintyre and today on haiti are present veteran broadcaster turned rancher bill kurtis curtis has hosted numerous news programs including investigative reports cold case file and american justice he's also the anger at dubuque bibi mtv in chicago curtis began his broadcasting career ad debuted i'd be debbie lee in topeka he serves on the kansas public radio advisory board in addition to his broadcasting interest curtis is the owner of the red buffalo ranch outside sedan kansas and the founder of the tall grass beef company he turns his investigative journalism skills to the beef industry in this talk recorded october twenty first two thousand eleven johnson county community college thank you so much wonderful facility

regulations of the most beautiful school let me be a little more specific case you're not completely familiar with me or my work i've done television for forty years and why some people think it's a documentary as for people in the local anchorman reigns supreme everything is business risks his name was wrong and that is up there the similarities too close friends from anchorman i became a boxer very fast and the professional boxer floyd money mayweather as the fastest has watson has ever seen so i've come to this ring to see

who's faster i'll be using the three g a t and he left after the law so i can browse the web faster e mail business plans first all ago i'm bill kurtis and faster than floyd mayweather i'm waiting for a call that i haven't gotten it yet at sorting for thirty years for cbs i decided to strike out on my own and created a documentary company to do investigative reports in american justice and i didn't read these days and cold case files for any end its association stare at you may know my face boy so better for cold case files so or american justice before i made the move to cable and then thirty years with cbs news after graduating from washer university law school asks cbs correspondent

thomas on in the morning and with diane sawyer and then go back to chicago to start the production company uncovered over the years it's such a sensational trial says richard speck of charles manson moving to chicago on a channel to became a kind of a local version of the network and travel before of places like the end of the vietnam war we broke the story on agent orange published a few things in that direction but no matter how far ice trade in the world that i was always pulled back to kansas i love the hilarious and i love the beaches to southeast asia but there was something about fences that always stayed with mei it was not until i returned home for a visit with my parents three fourths connection to the land became so clear riding them around the

west of independence kansas where i grew up out in the tall grass prairie just beginning in the flint hills that i realize i'm reminded me of africa kenya zimbabwe even and we had everything but the lego form of a big fire out there i said maybe it's the grass i love the way that the sky and land to meet along the horizon with clouds in the sky created almost perfect painting and for my eyes at what i want a rolex and while we go back to nature feel the earth under my feet the ranches where i go i named it the red buffalo ranch nine to ten thousand acres of tallgrass prairie of the vast cattle country in the world read buffalo was the osage indian term for the fire on the prairie hooded swept across the tall grass prairie and the osage diminished

a reservation at the time like a red buffalo horn ramone and my mission was to come from chicago by a big piece of land preserve a business i could and live on it so i started and then i could do cattle an oriole earl was depleted at the time although it wasn't a hundred dollars a barrel and that he had available and infrastructure for tourism hunting people shoot at chess so i am zeroed in on cattle and then i realize that i was about five miles from the nearest little town and when i was a kid in independence iowa didn't really cottoned to the out of towners and what an absentee landlords would fly and enjoy the ranch and then leave without leaving anything behind the soul i took a big interest in the town of savannah fifteen hundred people well

it's one of those things that just kind of tragic and fourteen buildings later restoring all the ones of an awful lot about a falling in love with your permission i'm mike i give a speech and was headed toward tulsa and i called back and said well maybe i am you know the apartment buildings and they said well how many do you want i said well what's the biggest cost is a twenty five thousand dollars i said no not the taxes are what is the cost of the building well as twenty five thousand beautiful building two hundred thousand dollars later with a new roof and wolves and flora the whole thing was new and it was sort of like that ride along the main street and i would stand back and look at main street i see wouldn't be awful if somebody came in with a tavern and put a big beer sign right in the middle of that

this became my art and so i wanted a building in and fix it up and i had a great time doing it now my ear pierced the results i was commissioned an artist in residence and his name was standard and stand on the amendment we spent some wonderful times together and went out on the left and it seems that's the place where he should work in addition to bill painting in addition to his crops and we looked at the lambda and together the more that i decided to do two interlocking interlocking circles which would be a tribute to the land and the people who came to live on the land europeans and the indians we had an unusual information rock formation a natural and carved out of limestone and it was cold which are false news why like to say it's the tallest waterfall in kansas

and it is a problem ten feet maybe fifteen feet of failure that pushed it and it is in a bowl of the water pumps into an aquatic creature s and then up in a secret meadow and roll why stan created this piece of art often wondered what her will happen when visitors from outer space and that insight on this as a stonehenge and they were able to measure the movement of the stories and this was their calendar back in the old days but there you have a big piece of our pride of the middle or working cattle ranch and it's wonderful so as i sat and watched the sunrises sunsets i began to search for a way to make the ranch self sufficient senate kansas fans and i thought of friendship and while gas production but from a history of the lower of the old west a lifestyle a cowboy the freedom of the open range has appealed to me a lot

and soon after adopting the conventional model of cattle production i discovered that the method was flawed i really could see into the future and i didn't see how they could really last for an awful long time corn prices were going up sky high right now and there were other problems in the feedlot method it was from the beauty of iran's that i drew inspiration for a new way to produce gavel and hopefully solve a mystery why the americans are becoming more on healthy every year i wasn't a donation is producing a generation of young americans that will not outlive their parents as with any investigation like in cold case files we need a crime scene on crime scene is all over the united states our victims four hundred thousand because of obesity

according to the cdc it's become the number two most preventable killer of americans for comparison the number one killer is tobacco four hundred and thirty five thousand the cdc says preventable because to stop at all you have to do to stop smoking same with obesity or is it in the twentieth century tobacco was the target of a mass movement a classic case of a tipping point a phrase coined by new york times author malcolm gladwell where to thirty years for scientists to combine with education to turn into a mass movement to demand an end to smoking in the public places in private spaces and term smokers into podcasts in the twenty first century food has become the target make things more interesting let's go back to our cold case analogy how could four hundred thousand self inflicted victims

anything more than at least suicide did they choose the themselves to death unless there was something that shouldn't be there in the food or not that shouldn't have been there in order to prove homicide or negligent homicide we have to look for motive means and opportunity means might be the easiest place to start a means of death is pretty obvious its debt in the united states it's called the western diet one interesting view comes from the researcher her wrote the book the paleo diet but lauren corrao damon study the diets of hunter gatherers from about one hundred and fifty thousand years ago and he concluded that while humans didn't change our diet did in fact it changed so much the diet related chronic diseases are the single largest cause of

mortality in westernized countries and yet they're rare or nonexistent in hunter gatherer or less westernize countries why diseases are caused by a complex interaction he wrote of nutritional factors directly linked the excessive consumption of novel industrial era foods dairy products cereals refined cereals refined sugars refined vegetable oils fatty meat salt and combinations of these foods were over sugared or assaulted them over fact of recording his team concluded that diseases are caused by this complex interaction and they were killing us and therein lies the mantra of the movement against the western diet that we indeed it too much of the wrong thing was put it in context for a

long time our weights in america was relatively stable like the french ever say though they did so much and so late and yet they're so thin why the nineteen eighty eight the cdc reported a remarkable change came from one of those giant government service that that dr david kessler wrote about his book the end of overheating he said americans were getting a weight from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety one one third of the population aged twenty to seventy four weighed too much in fewer than a dozen years eighty percent more americans about twenty million people roughly the population of new york and joined the ranks of the overweight study was published in jama magazine of the american medical association it's a real dramatic increases in all gender groups

im interested in this latest and nineteen sixty women from twenty to twenty nine average about a hundred and forty eight pounds by two thousand the average two hundred and fifty seven in the forty to forty nine age group they went from a hundred and forty two two hundred and sixty nine in two towns and those already overweight were gaining more weight a new type of disease was associated with obesity it just to it's like the original but we name because it's occurring so frequently in children there are about twenty four million children with the disease today that is expected to double to forty four million in twenty five years and i would take the cost of treating it from a hundred and thirteen billion dollars today to three hundred and thirty six billion and that's just one disease it's responsible for that statement that that this generation of children will

not outlive their parents pretty clear that we have a problem president clinton thinks it's the worst health problem we have and the dramatic rise in the twenty years suggests that it's more and just over eating there is a movement up there that thinks it's the food the movement has found an audience and the consumers demanding healthier food now changes already started etsy is offering a new line with natural sugar starbucks has eliminated high fructose corn syrup campbell's has reduced the amount of sodium in its soups they hear the tsunami wave that's approaching what happened how did we get to the point where a giant corporations are changing as an example of why it all happen let's take a look at two old friends first as corn and the story we came to have more of them anywhere else in the world

during the great depression in nineteen thirty three to be exact franklin roosevelt was afraid that our farmers were just don't go away so he established subsidies honest to say of small farms that included the big five we cut sugar soy beans and corn the government guarantee that the farmers would at least get back what it costs to plant them and harvest crops at work they were intended to be discontinued when the economy got back on its feet but they're still with his corn farmers get fifty cents on the dollar the plant corn and other gift to the corn farmer over the years next two decades was the form of hybrid corn developed to resist climate and pests it work to increase the yield increasingly yield would become both our salvation mr bargain with the devil as we shall see in our

third development for corn for ten thousand years we could only grow what the land would allow him for this tribal sacred plot of corn that was about of the hopi indian as it was about twenty will shortz an acre organic fertilizers white minority composts weekend baby and a few bushels to that but we were limited reason was nitrogen seventy eight percent are nitrogen is so our atmosphere is nitrogen and all plants need it to grow we learned to use nitrogen fixing plants like beans and i'll fall from and p is and then after world war two the german scientist named fritz harbor nevada where they come only on nitrate and chemical nitrogen fertilizer it rely on that produces twenty acres of bushels of corn in nineteen twenty produces two hundred bushels of corn today and it looks pretty good i judge and

fertilizer helped turn america into a corn nation these three eight developing forces nitrogen fertilizer i do i bring corn and do deals subsidies came together during a perfect storm during world war two to help win the war and put us on the road to industrializing food i mentioned unintended consequences are along the line here after years of applying that fertilizer to the sawmill we discovered the runoff nitrates are polluting our water supply i did a documentary on the pristine springs in florida the purest water on earth it's great to swim theyre just one day's flow of eighty thousand gallons would supply option others needs for a day tragically we found nitrates their source runoff from dairy farms in agricultural fields about twenty miles north same things are happening with the fertilizer says they run off the field from the mississippi

and into the gulf of mexico nitrates have caused this cause algae to grow to such an extent that it kills life golden threads that is new jersey but on the plus side we have a lot of corn i recorded friday on nitrogen fertilizers and it's thrived on those government subsidies encouraging a record yield year after year trouble was all those things combined in that perfect storm of abundance to produce too much corn we didn't have enough places to put that instead of cutting back on the corn production it was full speed ahead with it either buried in the mountain of corn or find a new market for it how about these guys that will lead to the corn since ranchers were paid by weight the faster the game says that they get paid and it tasted pretty good corn produces more control muscular fats which clever marketers

called marveling at the time we didn't even know that was saturated fat nor that saturated fat would clog our arteries and cause red meat to be taken off the menu for our patients and then one of the true innovations in american business took place often compared to henry ford's assembly line paul angler abilene texas decided that he could feed lots of cows at once fifty thousand cattle population garden city kansas thousands of animals fed by a single truck driver cornell graham license its criticized as sadness realized factory when the animals are commodities god knows it's easy to criticize mother nature who worked millions of years to perfect the perfect solar machine to turn plants that we can get into pro team that we can

achieve the form of belief in a sustainable full circle are now living out their lives in a place without any arrests at all standing in their own manure feedlots are under siege peter osgood event laughing every night and how easy it is to demonize the beef industry their arguments read like a donald trump divorce growth hormones cause young women who start puberty at nine years of age so you got to start early in the confined conditions cause diseases like abscess levers of acid causes a lot of problems caused by changing the diet from grass to go on and about that are used to treat the illnesses but they are now causing resistant bacteria that's bad because seventy percent of all the antibiotics that we manufacture in this country for us go to the livestock to keep them alive one of on corn so that

we can eat them and then there's a little thing called legalize zero one five seven well it had to recall almost weekly this strain of bacteria has found a way to make it past the acid barrier in the stomach that would tell them passed our stomach acid to kill us and there a science to show it only comes from grain fed cattle in feedlots and there's some i will point out and fairness there's some signs on the other side but it's interesting to support breastfeeding dr james russell cornell university ran an experiment they were feeding court up to at least five days but for for the last five days they feed grass to clean it all out we could reduce the amount of the risk of nikolai by eighty percent so corn industrialize the beef industry

subsidized by the government to keep a cheaper on the feedlots cause america's herd of cattle multiply over sixty years from about thirty five million to around ninety million today we got rid of the corn and eighty five million acres out of the united states which is incidentally the consumable by us we can't eat that point we can eat sweet corn it's only conceivable consumable by livestock and for the most part the corn in feedlots today is gmo than what we do with a kettle it was nineteen fifty five when god sent us a gift named ray kroc he saw america moving to the summers a giant highway is our lifestyle was speeding up you could even your car it on a concept from the mcdonald's brothers in bakersfield california to serve a tasty food fast likely in uniform crew members at a low price all made possible like cheap corn

michael pollan who wrote the omnivore's dilemma and made her a bible for the healthy food movement at a university of california biologist put a mcdonald's meals through a mass spectrometer to measure how much carbon is in the menu items from corn the soda measured out a hundred percent corn carbon the milkshake was seventy eight percent corn the salad dressing sixty five percent corn why so high and corn well high fructose corn syrup and it's the most valuable item we now have from court along with it he sees of coding his own plastics ethanol of course it all comes from the process of breaking down the kernel of corn that is mostly starch and sugar carbohydrates scott a process what we call it processed foods are fruitless corn syrup is the leading source of sweetness in our diet in fact

one fourth of the forty five thousand items that in the every supermarket have i fruit juice corn syrup it's cheap because it comes from government subsidized cheap corn ivory coast corn syrup goes to the question of why four hundred thousand new obesity victims it themselves to that if this was tobacco we'd say that high fructose corn syrup was the nicotine and addictive designed to hook the ear but there's no evidence of that yet come cheap dirty trick puts it in so much of our food because human beings are vulnerable to this exploitation of our sweet tooth because we are predisposed says you can say to eating an awful lot i in the early days of man you didn't know where your next meal is coming from so you sort of the energy running in gathering was hard work

unfortunately sugars and fats offer the most energy and the most calories western diet is filled with the over processed over salted junk food that's specially designed to appeal to a whole most at ian hunter gatherer and some evidence i was doing a story on the messiah man in africa and they were on a training mission and somebody cried out we have we found that these tests and soon they were scattering up the tree to get the hive and bring it down so that we can all have a little honey and i must say that it was the best tasting country that i have never had a no but we are predisposed to sweets there is an alternative that has become the darling of the healthy movement in the united states it's gross as fed beef has a long historical

tradition that dates back to the first english settlers in north america the historic reviews that were brought from england's euro grass fed than grass finished animals most of the rest of the world the day is still grass fed at the close of the american civil war and the beef industry boom as texas cattle man raises grass fed beef entrusted them to raul young cowboys who heard of them up the chisholm trail to the flint hills of kansas joseph mccoy and abilene finish them on lush grass is transported them by rail to chicago to feed hungry stickers beef made about the ems chicago great beef made us a natural no evidence no preservatives or artificial chemicals and no graham biehl protein became our number one source from beef why our times have changed where

corn said as growth hormones and record federal laws of on antibiotics to keep animals alive in the feed lot until harvest we don't have any grass fed beef has not with a feedlot is under siege for the overuse of antibiotics in gross mistreatment of animals grass fed cattle never see a feedlot and are raised according to dr temple grandin humane treatment protocols eagle eye are responsible for numerous recalls grass fed beef was a mention as eighty percent less risk of nikolai they're high in omega three low in saturated fat cholesterol and calories i am beta carotene lots of the good stuff it is an alternative like decaf coffee not to replace corn fed beef but to offer retailers and restaurants or is the choice for those concerned with their health

and a premium price brendan leave that you can change and charge war for justice think of that for a moment it requires education within the store owners and support from the top down to the meat counter but it is definitely worth it so what can we do and we changed the tide of unhealthy living the inhuman animal production and create a better future i'd choose less than be if i go to my ranch and so i'd say that is better for the consumer but of the environments that are for the ranchers that's why it's on the progress we've come through tall grass we aren't getting back to helping people eat healthier improving the environment as well as helping the local ranchers and its american made progress it's not the silver bullet but it's an alternative ends i invite you to try and verify kyle brings some back so that you can triage

so when i decided to go grass fed into and since it was a leap of faith because kansas livestock association just like the national cattlemen's beef association is all corn fed so here we were small little llc which you have to put together formally politically find made scientists who think like you do you can find a way with ultrasound to detect show we can actually put an ultrasound one i'm in the rhythm section we can get a readout of a living rib eye steak then apply twenty five points of the software program to determine if it's up to our protocols and has the quality and the tenderness that we would have been provided our product and then we have to find marketing and processors package or so that we've been centered around and suddenly i was out of television

business and up to my waiters in manure and it wasn't the easiest thing that we're now six years old and we're literally going against the grain we're swimming upstream and then something started to happen first of all we slipped into a recession the price of corn because of ethanol buying up all the corn went from two dollars a bushel to eight dollars a bushel if he loves exists only on cheap corn what happens when they would ripple usda predicts that that will go to fifteen dollars a bushel next year we've had a drought in texas floods along the mississippi the amount of corn in the united states is going to shrink and so the number of cattle food prices will go up the unintended consequences of ethanol production now stand alone something is done to perhaps run of beef industry out of the united

states because it will be good to name it will get to be too expensive for us to afford unfortunately waiting in the wings is australia and new zealand and paraguay and chile and uruguay and brazil argentina read you flooded our market with cheap beef and incidentally it's all grass fed but that's a farmer's dilemma in addition to having to wait for the rain to come i fell in love with kansas also because of the history i happen to have inherited with my sister the original location of the little house on the prairie near independence kansas we have all the places that are mentioned in the book laura ingalls wilder and stayed there with the family for a year and i actually they were trespassing on mouse at indian reservation juanita jump on getting land that the north was going to open up and that represents

one period in history around nineteen seventy one it in seventy two for the red homestead movement across the state of kansas starting here moving west to his south along the border with the missouri and then west into that wonderful country oil was produces corn was produced indians were moved off our cancers lands south into oklahoma they exist today it was indian territory until nineteen oh seven and i just yelled out about that and then we had the civil war and credible periods of history of all happen right here in kansas a beef also started here in the war started here but beef was driven from texas to kansas for a very specific reason not just because they like the scenery along the way after the civil war a lot of the southern soldiers had lost everything and began to

round up the mavericks that had been the longhorns and then turned out of from the mission's and they form giant herds of two thousand head it was so unusual a young man between fifteen and twenty five who made the drover strip because everybody older than that i was too smart thing and knew it was impossible to do so by the time they did make it to kansas they were ready to blow off steam and you have ellsworth and caldwell and odd city in abilene and baxter springs and elgin the great count towns that were depicted as america's story at individual a rugged rugged guy who can get out there and face the indians the fire on the prairie in the climate all alone and let up when he had the chance in the cutouts just another piece of that history and all seemed to come together and little sedan kansas so when i walk

through this town of fifteen hundred it seemed as though time had just forgotten that for about fifty years i love that because the pictures went back to nineteen twenty the buildings went back eighteen seventy two and as i started buying on i tried to buy those with limestone and play and munching game in between absolutely the rituals that still stand there and so it was a good mission to save the town and i began giving speeches and support to several million dollars into this this passion too try and revive small town economies and show that they actually can be successful and can be saved first as tourist attractions to show america where our values were born and still exist then they'd be ready when the internet comes through in weakened form are a little whether it's a

telemarketing company uses something on the internet to them increased the jobs of those towns enjoyed if the quality of life but i found quickly that we need a critical mass of almost ten thousand people i was a historian hilarious and there was about ten thousand feet we were trying to find shangri la and i'm sitting there early in the morning thinking i care i have the most beautiful place on earth and i'm thinking about the coffee and doughnut shop that just opened in one of my buildings and wondering how they did on this first day so that's how good you worked with with the mission loans were readily available mortgages could be head to improve i tried to i after i fixed my building supply tried to encourage businesses to and then

and so i offered free rent for a year before the un businesses never win another thing along most of the people that don't have the slightest idea what business was like so the most important thing that i can do to help the economy of the town was to teach them a few business lessons i didn't feel qualified having been in the cattle business but bring a man and then i have some classes afterwards open the second floor if you will and merchants association some were very good i had a cool lady who became a world class and they would drive for miles sort of like tell tale isn't over imagines am dumb and others just took advantage of the free rent and really didn't make it over the years oh with stem cell there was a spirit of grew up in the town of most fun just to walk through there was a feeling that we were doing

something really good and not only force of them but for kansas ends the whole midwest maybe that we did have a lot of future that went against the grave of slow outpouring of populations along to the big cities the big universities with children who'd never came back and then the death knell for a community as always when the school the high school sleeves and is consolidated into i am a county wide and when that happens there's really no reason for continuing to gather around a football game or go down to an auditorium and that's what we were fighting against but there was a there was a mission that was dispiriting two days ago i went into the bank and i said you know i really like write in the learning curve for congress before because you think and i put

up five hundred thousand dollars in collateral by buildings and three hundred head of cattle and for a lot of credit that made lego four hundred and eighty thousand dollars money that for the usda and they went into session and i'm sure reflected on everything that i had done for the town they came back and tonight my lawn and said you know i'm taking it personally i see what you do to the police as well we did it because of the examiners the policy in washington now is comes from the dodd frank bill with rules and regulations that govern banks are so loose and so they we don't know what the rules are and every monthly examiners come and go over our shoulders everything that we have done and criticizes that could put aside the business and we're afraid and frankly to give any long swim to banks and town the other night stop giving any loans

at all about a year ago now this bank the one i have been dealing with doesn't give any loans even her friends so we we get six hundred billion dollars put into a stimulus package and hope that it gets through the ranks and to people who needed entrepreneurs to create the jobs to get the recovery going again and find that like the colorado river starts out great in the rocky mountains but by the time every gets everybody gets their hand and it has no money to empty into the sea of cortez so no stimulus money is getting to where it is needed to do something about it so i thought last night to one other big banks be no harris i'm going to kansas city he said you know we call it and on frankenstein bill and it means that were always on the edge we never know you never know what the rules

that's exactly what is everybody blames us and other bankers want us to go out of business and glamorous but in fact a lot of it is that we are to blame but we're we are we're enjoying the worst time of our lives cause we want to help the community we know that were the artery of growth within a community always have that it's a separation between capitalism and free enterprise and socialism when it can come from the government and washington to a little town of fifteen hundred in cancers it has to come from the banking that services people to know that the people and who is going to pay it back and who has done their share for the community so that's a way of kind of coming around to absolutely the president and a problem that we are facing in kansas and they are facing a pilot in the midwest and the east to the west coast kenneth copeland about assure

that we will i don't call me a tea party an online a moderate but so nevertheless spread the negative a button to put on on my story so wonderland after all this fifteen years an investment of how many dollars are no official decision neil had to stop home you do you you've just survive with the town iowa kansas i love the ranch and i think it's time that will start speaking up every community has to get together first choose the leadership that is going to decide that with the people along a main street or other town that we want to do something to improve on in their jobs without your ed la plante wanna keep the young people there can be more exciting than a big

city and so we'll have a future that we won't blow away on the prairie i will leave you just with a few thoughts and then take a couple questions people always say one shoe em where waters of them the best thing is that you can think of what they usually the simplest ask you a couple questions i'm going to draw upon charles schulz and ayo favorite comic strip of yours cokie that you said to one of his articles want to ask you a couple of questions i think of a can you name the last five heisman trophy winners ok well then name the five wealthiest people in the world they've been in the headlines of the five last winners of the miss america pageant ok five people who have won the nobel

prize ok fine people who won an academy award and you do probably not very good there no second grade achievers here they are the best in their fields but applause dies awards tarnish achievements are forgotten accolades and certificates are buried with their owners now answer these questions just a few teachers who help you on your journey through school name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time than five people who have taught you something worthwhile and have a few people who made you feel appreciated and special and that you enjoy spending time where billy's years of that lesson is that the people who make a difference in your life or not the ones with the most credentialed the most money or the most awards is simply the ones who care the most

that's it on to somebody in your life who has made a difference with you and don't worry about the world coming to an end today already tomorrow in australia thank you ladies and gentleman rise to be with you and to be able to leave my story and as that beef you are listening to the broadcaster turned rancher bill kurtis who now takes questions from the audience at johnson county community college according to the two thousand nine cents is the median household income in johnson county is approximately seventy two thousand dollars the residents of accounting like winston county however are making around twenty five thousand dollars per month is the added expense associated with consuming organically produced food feasible for people in the center all is more expensive to eat organic and natural through their effect very difficult for when you're getting a natural food in kansas and so these dances

we shot all of the state and we exist on the processed foods are the cheapest food in the supermarket as the processed for the fast for the most expensive and the reason is it takes me twenty four months to produce a grass fed animals because they modeled naturally on grass it takes only sixteen months to produce a cornfield animal because the six months in the feedlot that corn covers up a lot of problems and it tasted so somewhere along the line we talk in chicago in terms of michelle obama's food deserts some possible to find healthy food there sooner or later there will be an equalizing porsche we think and it may be this turning upside down the food prices

because of this commodity driven corn prices go up theoretically the grass prices should stabilize and find a nice niche in the marketplace has sole unless we price everybody out maybe were coming closer to close together and you know i paid top dollar if not more whatever i do that the processor's slaughterhouse because i'm special i'm only fifty head of cattle a week against a thousand five thousand head that are processed at the same facility so they have to wash it down they have put me thru first and i have to pay for it so sony why i couldn't quite hear the full law question not what i hope for coming and we knew were brando you know iphone didn't start out really cheaper can build so that has to get out there but oh my question is what you think mass media's role as anchor chain sustainability issues

what's the mass media's role in covering the sustainable with other issues well i've been doing it and i think it has a big role as a matter fact a day mass media you know you can make something a household word or i don't overnight all but you cannot have to know about al gore won the nobel prize for powerpoint essentially on climate change so that sustainable agriculture is the topic and news subject that is kind of getting hot it is that if it is if it is the new tobacco then in a celebrity chefs that are making the news in becoming so popular are carrying the word about this product better about it once we have a hot

dog and that's all the vanilla nitrates know my tribes that kids can eat all day all week lesson is that you know it's not as exciting this gadhafi in a sewer pipe so so what we have to constantly fight for our park place and yet were doing at him lie in chicago we talk about vertical farms an abandoned steel mills where organic farmers are going on and putting in hydroponic plants on it and that's exciting that's where solar perhaps is going to really develop we have abandoned lots in the ghettos that are now being turned over young people to grow the organic foods and sell them to the restaurant that's the time the stuff thats really happening today it's very exciting and and we see feature stories from a lot of their daily you know on top of city hall and now there is an

ordinance or incentives to turn rooftops into gardens europe is far ahead of us in terms of our energy sources the goal of the third industrial revolution and i would recommend that title by jeremy rifkin to catch up on things we believe in creating large central generators and then distributing the energy out when power plants produce farmers going in their mind the debt ceiling plan but to my ranch and problems always been the transmission lines how to get a tool that central point to to distribute about europe has gone the other way they say why do that what i should take an individual generator with winter blues or solar panels and put one on the roof of every house then you create your own energy and feed the excess into a smart grid

where it can then be distributed you do to the town or to others with that way get off fossil fuels and you have a sustainable type of energy source the call that the third industrial revolution that's it is your journalistic reasons the us here to manage in your mission and sitting and why i use your journalistic skills from researching for things like an aggressive they've well thats easy what you look for facts and in this case your ears auto industry and industry is one of the problems with feedlot industrialized culture and what's the solution and i've i now can tell you the latest research the latest science to come out of england island and i just kind of upgrading the viola no more

perfect website has not only hours at all roast beef dot com that i think will eat while that really has all the science included in there so journalism this curiosity its pursuit of intellectual pursuit of answers to make your life better in my life better it is communicating problems to intelligent people to solve those problems that basically struggling so i can i can do a documentary on the rain forests in brazil godown a thousand feet to the bottom of the pacific off the galapagos looking for that something new and then come back until the story that's what i enjoyed doing so you just applied that i didn't last long you apply it to another problem next do you believe it's possible to significantly reduce the amount of grain fed beef being produced today and what's standing in the way of this becoming reality why i i

think so and the biggest lie is true what is going to happen the price of corn is going to go up to where it is simply not feasible to run the feedlots on corn corn is a good tasting where all we've all grown up on earth and our one hope everybody has an open mind about it but the good is in your back pocket and you can see a train coming once again thank you very much we've just heard bill kurtis veteran broadcaster host and producer of investigative news programs like cold case files american justice and investigative reports curtis began his broadcasting career at debut i'd be debbie you're in topeka in the interest of full disclosure curtis has served on the kansas public radio advisory board for over ten years in addition to his broadcasting interest curtis is also the owner of the red buffalo ranch

outside sedan kansas and the founder of the tall grass beef company for more information about either of those interest their websites are there red buffalo dot com and tall grass beef dot com curtis was the third speaker in the kansas lecture series sponsored by the cancer studies institute at johnson county community college he spoke at johnson county community college on october twenty first two thousand eleven i'm j mcintyre kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas from presidents to poets others to ambassadors at our present is the way to listen in on some of the most interesting speakers they come to northeast and east central kansas i'm kay macintyre join me every sunday evening at eight o'clock four k pr presents kansas public radio's weekly public affairs program featuring guests from the university of

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