Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
From Battlefield to Ranch: Kevin Key on Regenerative Agriculture and Veteran Transition
In this episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero welcomes veteran and entrepreneur Kevin Key for an inspiring discussion about life after the military, cattle ranching, and the power of regenerative agriculture. Kevin shares his journey of transitioning from military service to civilian life, finding purpose in the ranching world, and advocating for sustainable farming practices.
Together, they explore the vital role of cattle ranching in land preservation, local sourcing, and sustainable food systems. Kevin dives deep into the benefits of a carnivore diet, the realities of the cattle industry, and the groundbreaking insights from his book, The Cow is How. The conversation highlights the intersection of nutrition, environmental stewardship, and personal health.
Listen as Kevin and Deny discuss the cultural significance of ranching in America, the challenges of maintaining healthy soil, and advice for veterans looking to enter the agriculture industry. From real estate ventures to the importance of community engagement, this episode sheds light on how ranching can be a pathway to healing, purpose, and impact.
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Cattle Ranching and Veteran Leadership
02:53 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
06:06 Innovative Business Ventures in Real Estate and Entertainment
09:07 The Debate on Nutrition: Cattle Ranching vs. Veganism
11:57 The Carnivore Diet and Personal Health Journey
17:05 Researching Food Systems: The Cow is How
23:58 The Realities of the Cattle Industry and Its Benefits
26:13 The Harmony of Regenerative Agriculture
27:59 The Struggles of Modern Cattle Ranching
30:54 Innovative Approaches to Ranching
32:04 Navigating Industry Challenges
36:43 The Importance of Local Sourcing
39:21 Preserving Land and Legacy
40:41 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
44:48 Advice for Aspiring Rancherst
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Produced by Security Halt Media
Security Odd Podcast. Let's go the only podcast that's purpose-built from the ground up to support you Not just you, but the wider audience, everybody. Authentic, impactful and insightful conversations that serve a purpose to help you. And the quality has gone up. It's decent. It's hosted by me, danny Caballero. It's decent it's hosted by me, denny Caballero the best way forward how we can save our American public through proper nutrition and how we can stop vilifying cattle ranchers. It's important to have guys like you on, because not only were you a remarkable leader in the military, but since I was a brand new Green Beret, when I first met you, you were the first company commander I had. But even back then, it was known that you had this proud lineage with cattle ranching, and it's something that is awesome to see. Our veterans are able to get out and continue to lead, and continue to lead in industries that are so frigging vital. So today, man, this is your episode.
Speaker 2:Let's dive in Well thanks, danny, I appreciate the words and I remember when you showed up and you were a damn good Bravo and I know your career went on to do great things. I followed you and it's great to call you a brother. But yeah, when my grandfather got back from World War II he had originally grown up in Kansas and got his veterinary degree from KU and then joined the Army and did veterinary doctor stuff and actually spent a lot of time on naval ships. But he got back and he really wanted to get into cattle ranching and there wasn't much left for him back in Kansas. His parents died and so he took my grandmother's childhood sweetheart and he moved her and his two aunts out to Nevada because he found that that might be a good place to start buying land, start cattle ranching and start a little veterinary practice. And that's what that's what he did, and so it's a generational cattle ranching and I started it's.
Speaker 2:It's it's morphed over the years. Now we're Black Angus production cattle, if you will. We follow a lot of the lobbies and a lot of the programs and we sell under Rabbit Creek Ranch but the overall business is Key Ranches. But it's a ton of fun being around quality people, our ranch managers, the families that live out there have been with us 25 to 35 years. Wow, they're salt of the earth people. We consider them family and they're the real. They're the real cowboys that have the looper up above their head, going down the hills going way too fast and stuff that I I just look and applaud at. But but it is a, it's an honor to be part of it.
Speaker 1:Man, I've seen some of your videos, uh, highlighting some of the best times out there, and it looks like you're you're still on deployment. It's literally you on atv going on the back country. I'm like dude, it's just like afghanistan, except a lot less. Maybe there's a fair amount of danger, but probably, uh, not so much with slinging lead you know, sometimes I'll shoot a badger or something.
Speaker 2:But yeah, a lot, a lot less, a lot different than afghanistan. It kind of does feel like a deployment, but it's way simpler. I don't need to have double basic load, I don't need to have a whole bunch of equipment. I don't got any soi, I don't got a big comms check it's. It's just me and it's just me and a in a in a go bag really rounds of ammunition, because I don't expect to find a lot of badgers yeah, going back in, though, I have to imagine that your pivot there.
Speaker 1:There must have been a lot of maybe new lessons to be learned. I do understand that there's a lot that transfers over, but going back into this, was there a lot of fear there? Was there a lot of like catching back up, or were you able to do like a seamless jump?
Speaker 2:uh, you know I I don't think it's ever seamless and I'm still tripping over random corners that no one painted orange but uh, so I don't know that it's seamless, but I I've really enjoyed uh to transition into the civilian uh workplace. I stayed, I I kept my clearance for a couple years and and did some contract work and just kind of found like I don't really like doing that that much and I uh and also, you know, also you know I got I enjoyed dealing with chasing money and uh and and building and building businesses. In fact, tomorrow I've been doing uh. I started uh, I was doing residential stuff and I was flipping houses for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:I like real estate and uh, I always kind of thought that'd be fun and I dabbled in it when I was active and then got out and started buying a lot of property on the other side of the country, where I am now on the space coast of Florida and flipping houses and that was fun. And then I took the jump and went into commercial and my first commercial business will open tomorrow morning. No, way.
Speaker 2:About two years in the works and it's been a lot of fun. But to get back to your question, it's been a lot of fun, but to get back to your question, you know the leap. I treated it just like a military operation. I see a lot of veterans, don't they kind of? They know, we know how to do MDMP, we know how to do mission analysis, we know how to do IPB, we know the 17 steps of MDMP, backwards and forward. But then guys get out and they look at like well, well, my aunt lives over here and so I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2:But I want to focus on, you know, whatever you're like gambling machines, whatever your focus is and then they but you just screwed up the where. If you don't have all five w's right of a mission statement, you failed before you started and you gotta get the where, and so where I live, I I want to go after real estate. I looked at markets all over the country I wasn't even tied necessarily to the US and I found I looked at the 2020 BRAC Space Reenactment and Closing Commission and I looked at what they were doing in the space coast of Florida and the partnerships with private industries such as SpaceX, blue Origin, dale 3, harris and all these things, and I looked at how that area area, the area where I am now got crushed in 2008, like everywhere, and then got crushed even harder in 2011 when they took the space shuttle away. So scratched my head a little bit, you know what I don't know anybody there, but let's go start buying property there, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I just did my, I did my due diligence, I did my ipb, I did my mdmp and turns out it it's, it's work. And and I do the same approach with the cattle ranch out West, where I spent about a quarter to a third of my time- yeah, it's funny how area studies, analysis, all the fundamentals and even PDSS I've met tons of guys that had the right mentality.
Speaker 1:They understood the industry, they wanted to get in and they did exactly what we did. And when we were preparing for a mission long, long range planning what do I need to make this pivot successful? How do I get it?
Speaker 2:yeah, and, like you know, the this, the business that I'm opening tomorrow and I'm gonna give a little plug for it. It's called, please. It's a. It's a family entertainment center in downtown coco beach. It's Beach, it's on the beach.
Speaker 2:And before I explain more about it, I'll explain kind of what I did. I originally was going to do like axe throwing in bikinis. I'm like what? I'll throw in bikinis, we'll throw in axes, we'll do some weird stuff, I'll set up a little selfie museum. And I thought, well, that's the direction I was going.
Speaker 2:And then I did the same thing that we do in the military. I'm like, okay, let's do pattern of life, let's recon. And there was no halo, sexy infill. I didn't have to scuba Steve up to anything.
Speaker 2:I parked my car on plain sight, got my clipboard, got a coffee and I sat my ass down in front of the property that I had bought and I just looked at it and I watched it at it and I watched it all different times a day and I saw families coming off the beach and wiping their kids feet off with wet maps.
Speaker 2:I saw kids full of sand, screaming and crying. I heard some other kids want to go back to the beach and other moms want to get the little ones off and I'm like this is there's. There's some problems here. So what I did is I built an outdoor pool and put indoor arcade and a whole bunch of showers so you can come get shower, get a, get a wristband, go to the beach all you want, come back, play, get an ice cream sandwich, play in the arcade, run around, get energy out and get out of the weather it's indoor and most of it's a pretty outdoor pool and let your kids run around and then, if you want to go to dinner you're not all full of sand go shower, yeah, and go go enjoy a nice restaurant in downtown coca beach and it was just from. It was that simple ipb kind of stuff like what's missing what do we need to do?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's brilliant tomorrow morning. For what's the? Uh, the annual surfing santas competition, which every year coca beach tries to break the world record for the number of surfing santas. Dude that that's perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, knowing you, it doesn't shock me the way you approached it and that's the brilliance of you. Don't have to have 15 doctorates and master's degrees and all the stuff to sit down and open up your lens, open up your aperture and look at the problems, look at what's not working. How can you improve on it? How can I be successful in this space? Like, what do they need? And so many veterans already do that in their day-to-day lives and have this idea and this thing that grows within them and they want to try it. But then it gets scary. That next step, having to put it into action gets really scary. And guys back out and they do the contracting, they do the normal things that that we've been told is normal, we've been told is safe and gs10.
Speaker 2:Sure, whatever you do, we need those people. I got nothing to frown about it, not nothing but applause and love for my brothers to choose whatever direction they want no but you're right, it is in. You know, I, I threw 100 of my life savings into the end of the stuff that I'm doing and if it didn't, if it didn't work or doesn't work, that's it's, I'm all in. Yeah, fail fast. It's been working so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, food on the table normally beef which, uh, you know, which is something that we grew up always being told that, uh, and especially like for for a while I forget when it first really started kicking out this whole vegan kick and this whole like, try to erase proteins like the beef protein out of your, your diet. It's really bad for you, high cholesterol, and cows are destroying the environment and I just remember how passionate these activists have been growing in the last few years about removing cattle from the environment and I'm like, dude, this doesn't make any sense. And you look at everybody who's amplifying this message and it's all about destroying the farming industry, destroy the ranching industry. And it's like, wait a second, why don't we listen to the voices of the people actually doing this? Why don't we listen to the doctors are actually showing how healthy diet it's a healthy and vital aspect of your diet to eat beef, to actually have real protein, not synthesized protein from a fake veggie burger. There's real stuff, like the cardboard diet for instance. Tons of guys switch to it.
Speaker 1:Before I left the teams or tons of people that were making that shift and I noticed nobody had any adverse effects. But every time I talked to somebody that had been on a vegan diet for a really long time, like, yeah, I had to supplement heavily with X, y and Z. I was not able to get everything through my nutrition. And when you were going back into the space, like, how did you find yourself wanting to put more time and effort into this and to figure out the backstory, figure out the truth, and how can you, like, make it a profitable industry or make a profitable endeavor, knowing that there are so many people on the outside trying to cut you down, trying to destroy the beef industry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an awesome question, and I have seen a pendulum shift. I don't know if it's quite a swing yet, but it seems to be a shift where I'm primarily carnivore.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I have been a keto carnivore for about four years now and I do see that. You know I compare it to the craft beer market. You know Coors and Budweiser would never stand for someone taking 10 percent of their aisle. But slowly people wanted to know where their beer came from and the craft beer thing started to grow and you go into any supermarket across the country now and you got about 10 percent of it is local craft beer or something you know throwing some Samuel Adams and some other and some other, uh, beers, but it beers. But they took that from the Coors and Budweiser mainstream and you can kind of see that now happening with beef.
Speaker 2:People want local beef, they want it and you can see that starting to grow in each supermarket and you can see with your own eyes. I got a little section and it's locally sourced wherever you live and it's starting to grow and that, to me, tells me that there's more people out there getting interested in the beef and interested in the food and paying attention to the facts. Because you know, I'm, I'm almost 52 and I'm I can still run a sub seven minute mile. I I think I got a lot we have to.
Speaker 1:We do have to say you are not the normal human being. You're Kevin Key, you were major America and you're still. Thanks, david.
Speaker 2:But I hurt too. I got metal. I've had knee surgery, I've been following.
Speaker 1:I've been following. I was joking with Shane a while back and we were like dude. This is the only man that, when they go in to like improve his body, they're like we can't improve it with science.
Speaker 2:This man's perfect like, yeah, well, I've always eaten a lot of beef and yeah, you know, what's kind of funny on it too is the more I've done it. I, you know, I started out just doing keto and like I'd buy the keto friendly stuff, the bars on the side, and and then, uh, my taste just changed and now I just kind of just want meat and I and the thing I love about the keto carnivore thing is, it's not some darn religion, like I'm not preaching. If I want a beer, I'll drink a beer, and if I want to have some nachos, I'll eat some nachos. You know, go out to sushi, I'll have some sushi, I'll eat rice. It's not a religion, it's a way, it's a better practice, where, you know, I kind of look at myself as I appreciate your words, but I kind of think of myself as that old Mach 1 Mustang that's got a little bit of rust under it.
Speaker 1:It ain't the fastest thing around.
Speaker 2:It ain't the prettiest one, but it works pretty good and sounds. It backfires here and there but I'll throw the 87 octane in it and just kind of keep it going. And that's kind of what I do with my diet. I keep about 90 to 95 percent of the stuff going into me.
Speaker 1:There's good stuff and then friday and saturday nights a lot of whiskey seems to find its way to my lips and and, uh, you know, and I'll just do. I'll do what makes me happy. Yeah, we have to. We have to understand that we get. Both camps can get really rigid in their belief and I I understand the importance of advocating for what you feel is the right path. But, man, just live your life. Just live your life, find what works for you and don't try to vilify somebody that doesn't fall into your camp. Because I'll tell you right now, every time we went down south, the thing that stuck with me are butcher shops. Everywhere we went, we were able to get good quality meat right from a butcher Cheap and for a great price. I remember Peru be able to buy all the beef and be able to eat like kings.
Speaker 1:People always think that when we travel abroad, we're constantly eating at restaurants. Fine dining is like, no, like. There are moments where you go visit really like nice places, but the culminating thing after a hard day's training is you go back to the house and you cook something. You have something. You're all working together to make a meal.
Speaker 1:And the butcher shops it stands out because we used to have them all over the United States. It used to be where you would go get your meat. Nowadays they don't exist, like there are very few of them at least, and I feel like that is a huge disservice to American people. Like being that you can go and then, and people like right now, one of the biggest things I hear from all my friends is like, oh, we're gonna buy uh a quarter, we're gonna go get our own cow and uh know where we're getting our beef. Or hunting, being able to get your own game and understand, like, what you're putting in your body matters because, come to find out, the people that say they're supposed to take care of you, that they have all these regulations of how they're going to help you be healthy, they're're not necessarily the best public servants.
Speaker 2:You're right, denny. Yeah, but you know it's interesting For me. Covid was really the answer of what turned me on. I'd heard about the carnivore diet. I'd heard about keto. It sounded pretty neat, but you know, not having a bunch of nachos I like nachos.
Speaker 1:Or french fries.
Speaker 2:I don't know about them. Yeah, I don't know. And then and then covid happened and bored out of my mind sitting around watching documentaries and kind of navigated, uh digressing real quick. When I was in in an mps uh naval postgraduate school, I did my master's, I wrote my uh master's thesis on human performance and uh was not looking at keto carnivore but couldn't deny the data with nutrition and really that was. That was really when my journey kind of to nutrition started and and really paying a lot of close attention and I got into eating whole natural foods at that time and that's when you met me. I was kind of just like, eat healthy, but yeah, but not a strict in any one way. But then I started reading more and I just kept staying interested with it and uh, covid happened. I'm like well, I'll start reading this.
Speaker 2:And then I got covid, like, well, if I really think, I really think this thing works, now's the time to put my health where my mouth is and and I'm all right, I think I think there's something to it. So I went strict carnivore and like, like most people that do it, I had a slump. I got, I got brain fog and lasted about 10 days. I didn't really feel that good, kind of felt like shitting. Then I got through it and then all of a sudden I didn't need coffee that much anymore. I didn't need other things. Right, I have gray in my beard, but a lot of it went away. My skin got better things.
Speaker 2:I didn't even give a shit about like my recovery time went back down from workouts to what I what is getting. When I was in my 30s I'm like, hey, this is cool. And then, once my body got used to being in ketosis, I could throw in easy cheats, I could have beer, but my body's still going to just rock right through it. I can have rice, I can have it in moderation, and it worked, but just kind of kept studying. And then Segway, and then that led my wife and I we just wrote our first book, the Cow Is how, which just came out on Amazon. The Cow Is how, and it's how we fix our food, farming and pharma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's dive into that. That's the meat of this episode. Take us through that process, going into the belly of the beast, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Sure. So we were again lots of research, going into this stuff, reading a ton of books not thinking of writing a book, just kind of really getting into it and then looking at some of our family and mental health issues that they struggle with and physical ailments and my wife lost her mom to pancreatic cancer suddenly. And we started doing all these correlative research topics and you start to see where there's these things like arsenic in water and poor health choices and all these preservatives that are illegal in other countries that are in just tons of our food and all this poisoning factors that are everywhere. And then my wife's father was diagnosed with Parkinson's recently and so we started to look at contributing factors in the rise and all these Western illnesses that correlates directly to the rise in preservatives and junk stuff that comes in colorful boxes that are throughout the supermarket. So we started really kind of caring about the people around us Like, hey, how does this matter? And we started doing research and more and more and more and more and more and I started going to seminars and joining different groups and then really kind of look into like wow, this is really crazy, like there's a lot of correlation and the evidence that's out there that says, hey, you shouldn't eat meat or you shouldn't do. This is really based on false studies at best, and kind of just ecological studies that look at like, well, these people have these problems and they did this. Well, what else did they do? Did they also smoke, drink? There's I mean there's a thousand factors. You can't blame it on anyone of these factors. But you start to look at studies that show people that did just eat a lot of meat and you look at the Native Americans. They didn't eat much other than meat until we got here and started throwing garbage out and they, by all accounts, 200 years ago, were some of the healthiest people anyone had ever seen or heard of. And the stories of how they would ride for miles and miles and miles for just their daily practices are unreal and unheard of now. And those are physical feats. So they obviously were healthy. And why? And I think there's a lot of false criticism there.
Speaker 2:And the thing that always kills me is the methane, which A? It's not barks, it's burps. And you're going to tell me right now our cattle herd in the United States is down to what it was in the 1950s. We're very small and a lot of that is because of recent droughts throughout Texas and other areas. And then price of cattle kind of drives it too. And the big four that really control the industry, the big four feedlots and producers and they're kind of criminal as it is, but they, they really kind of drive the industry and so our cow herd is down the law. And you're going to tell me that these 30 million cattle that we currently have in the united states are somehow worse than the, than the 300 million bison, yeah, that are bigger and have bigger burps, and and we're everywhere. You're gonna tell me that. And right now we know that the largest producer of methane in the united states is the everglades, because it's it's dying gas and the everglades are full of dying shit, yeah, and one of the biggest agricultural ones is rice cultivation.
Speaker 1:I know that again you do.
Speaker 2:That's through and and all that is in our book and it's documented. All that but the other problems are is in our book and it's documented and all that. But the other problems are our modern wheat, soy and sugar cultivation. They till the top of the soil and what that does is it prevents the natural grasses, such in our prairies and the Great Plains or what once was the Great Plains. It prevents them from going down deep was the Great Plains. It prevents them from going down deep. And when they go down deep, that's how you sequester carbon and other harmful gases out of the atmosphere and where they do good, into the soil.
Speaker 2:And there's stories about and this is in the book as well that when we were settling the Great Plains, we could actually build houses out of mud blocks and then we started tilling the soil, we planted crap on top and and now it's then it turned into dust bowl yeah, in the great depression. And now we still, and now we got these things with glycogen and all this other poison that we put on there. We have to have special resistant corn stalks to for this, for all this, all this dn genetically modified crap. And the worst part of it all is not only we're not sequestering the carbon, but that water is not getting down into the aquifer, which was once the largest aquifer in the world, and now we're down to about 20% of our aquifer, that's under what was once the great plains because of our agriculture practice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we tweak one thing and we set off a giant chain of events that nobody really pays attention to, unless you're going for a graduate degree. And even then the studies are all swayed and come to find out the studies are often focused around the things that benefit the people that donate the most to these universities. I didn't know that. I'm just now finding that out as I'm going to school. So that just tells you like holy shit, if I have enough money to invest and donate, well, I can get pretty much pay for research to reflect what I wanted to reflect and that is criminal.
Speaker 2:That is absolutely criminal. Yeah, broccoli and grass-fed beef. Don't build wings at universities or medical schools or nutrition schools.
Speaker 1:So true, when you're diving into this subject, did you find yourself going down the rabbit hole and sort of scaring yourself with how much is out there that is trying to fight against your industry?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and even when I're writing the book well, people are gonna hate us I'm just, I'm I'm telling like in the book, I'm just saying, hey, big pharma, you're wrong and you're evil, and, and, and you know I'm sorry, big ag, you're wrong, you're evil. Uh, you're screwing up our planet, you're poisoning the people. Billions of pounds of of anti-insecticide crap and all stuff we put, we spray all over our food and and beef and and other livestock are not immune. But it's a lot better than a lot of this corn and corn products and soy products and and there's just so much poison in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and when it comes to telling the truth, what are some of the real realities? We've already covered some of the myths, but what are some of the truth about the cattle industry that we need to promote and start sharing and telling people about it? Because we don't really have a good messaging system or messaging arm for the cattle industry. We don't have a big, we don't have a Netflix show, we don't have somebody amplifying these messages, so we're just stuck having to either find the studies on our own or, you know, finding niche creators are willing to talk a little bit about it. So tell us, like, what are some of the realities of this line of work? How is it a benefit to our nation? Well, it is it it it.
Speaker 2:It is really a significant benefit, but it also is very disjointed. So, for instance, our cattle, our cattle ranch, we are a calf cow and a lot of people don't understand how the whole process works. So what we do is we buy bulls, we breed our cattle and then we raise young steers and heifers and then we wean them and we advertise they'll be weaned for 30 days and then we ship them off to a buyer somewhere in a semi-truck and the buyer brings their semi-truck and then we start the process all over again and when they leave us, they go to what's called a stocker and they're normally there a year to 18 months and then they just be happy and get big and then they go to a feedlot, which they're there for about anywhere between two to six weeks and that's where all the stats come from. Like, oh, all this methane. And they do the feed and they look at the feed level.
Speaker 2:Well, you're talking about less than five to ten percent of a cattle, a cow's life, yeah, and so, and most of the time when they're out on pasture, the grass is immediately sequestering a lot of that, uh, that methane and other forms of things. And in addition, like when you just look at, like when you look at a row crop industry, like corn or anything, you look at what that's done to what was once the natural environment, and then you compare it to a cattle ranch and you're going to see some fences, but you're going to see something that looks pretty darn similar to what it looked like 500 years ago. You're going to to see the deer. You're going to see the antelope. You're going to see the. You're going to see the foxes. You'll see whatever the rabbits you're going to see. You're going to see the rivers unaltered. You're going to largely see that those that the environment is what it's meant to be, which is to support bovine creatures as well as the rest of nature together nature together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the important thing, to realize that it's it's not destroying the environment, it's living within the ecosystem that's already there. Like that's the other thing that I've learned about understanding regenerative agriculture, the way we farm in this country, that the what we've come to be told is the normal way of farming. It's ridiculously destructive, it's not in line with nature and it's by being able to apply these like tried and true methods that existed long before modern agriculture, that we can get back to like having healthy soil. That's another thing. I didn't understand the importance of healthy soil, soil that actually feeds back and gives nutrients back and retains those nutrients as well, rather than that topsoil layer that we were talking about earlier, just freaking, just destroys and blows everywhere.
Speaker 1:When we're talking about modern cattle ranching, are we looking at the end days? Are we looking at an industry that doesn't have enough people involved? Or is there an American spirit that's being woken up and having more, more and more people turning to it? Because, like you mentioned before we we have this powerful system that dominates and kind of makes it almost not profitable to be a cow rancher these days. We look at the top producers of beef. Uh, I think brazil is still one of the big producers of meat.
Speaker 1:It's like everything's being like shoved outside of meat. It's like everything's being shoved outside of the United States. It's a part of our American culture, american culture. It's being erased. The cow rancher, the cowboy, these are all things that are American, as can be. West wasn't one. On salad, it wasn't, but we're trying. We're like, I see, like yellowstone's, a perfect, or we shouldn't say a perfect a dramatic example of what we could be seeing just constantly pushing back against this vital aspect of our, our american way of life into almost into, uh, extinction. Um, do you feel that there's hope for it or do you feel like it's still a hard fight to get people brought into this industry? I think there's hope and uh and.
Speaker 2:But I I think the struggle is real and it hurts a hurts a lot of families and you know I'll give you a quick little story to this point is I used to work out on our cattle ranch in the summers and I would, I got paid and I would go out there and do cowboy stuff and loved it. I thought it was great and long before I decided to join the military, my grandfather asked me so what do you want to do with your life? I said I just want to come out here and work. And I thought I was saying something really cool that he would like to hear. Like oh, you want to be part of this. And he fired me on the spot, right there, and he said that's it. He fired me on the spot, right there and he said that's it. You're fired. You'll never work for this ranch another day, but you're invited back all the time and I hope to see a lot of you.
Speaker 2:But if you want to learn to run and own this thing, go get another job. And sadly that's what you got to do in most cases. Go get another job so you can survive a couple years of drought and this ranch doesn't die, you don't have to sell it. Yeah, get another job so you can survive a couple years of drought and this ranch doesn't die. You don't have to sell it. Yeah, because that's what happens, sadly, to a lot of uh owner operators is times get tough and what are you gonna do? Are you? Are you gonna let your family starve and and and? The sad answer is a lot of times they have to just sell yeah and then, and those developers are knocking at the door ready, ready, ready.
Speaker 2:That's so true, I'm actively looking into things like conservation, easements and and diversitizing. I, we, I do not do farm to table. I want to do farm to table and but that takes people and I made our ranch manager a promise Like I'm not going to throw I. You know me. I got a lot of random ideas all over the place all the time but I said, look, you're going to listen to my random ideas and don't expect that I think they're all going to work. You're just going to entertain me a little bit, but I promise you I'm not going to throw random ideas at you without more help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I got to figure out how, how do I do this? What's the infrastructure look like? Where do I build it? How do who's going to do it? Yeah, how do we get them? And, uh, and I got to build that and I'm and I I'm just. I stood up a company called battleborn beef which I'm going to do that on the ranch, and so it doesn't actually threaten the ranch and so if it fails, that's all right. Yeah, all right, dad. So you're right, it didn't work, but but. But, nothing's wrong with the ranch. Ranch is fine, but I'm going to try to start doing farm to table, starting uh next year and that's what battleborn beef will be yeah and uh, and right now there isn't one.
Speaker 2:There isn't one steak ready to serve, so it's just on paper. But I'm going to start looking at taking some of our leftover stuff, looking at ways to finish them, looking at where do you get them. Getting cattle processed is a significant pain in the butt to sell. Yeah, it's it. If you're talking state lines and all the, if you have a processing plan, you have to hire a full-time FDA employee and normally too, with all of the special handicap things and all that and you pay for them and pay for their office and they can shut you down at any time.
Speaker 2:And so working through the red tape of getting somebody an actual piece of steak on their plate is really hard. And when you hear people talk about the quarter cow and half cow, what you're actually doing is you're buying that. You're buying that cow or that part of part of a co-op, if you will, for a cow and you're, and then you're basically at the whim of who knows like, okay, now you own it, what would you like to do with it? Well, I thought you're going to turn it into hamburger and steak. Well, yeah, that's what you'd like to do. So you're actually they're, they're doing it, but you, effectively, are owning it and you're the one that's actually uh, legally, yeah, through that process is how they, how they skip that, that uh legal loophole yeah, it seems like we built a system that is just trying to handicap the mom and pop rancher it is.
Speaker 2:It is and you know like, for instance, when we sell our uh cattle that we're in northeastern nevada, sometimes they'll go to nebraska and then they'll, then they'll go to like oklahoma, to a feedlot, and that's transportation of giant thousand pound animals that's, and that cost is put on to, that is put put onto the consumer. And you know I love being in cattle ranching business. But, uh, I'd like to see that change and I'd like to find a way to start changing it. On my end, and right now I'm victim to the industry that I'm part of and I can't, I'm not allowed to finish beef and sell it off of our ranch, can't? It's against the law. And so I'm working to ways to try to figure out how to do that and how to get quality product where I can say this is where this came from and there are no crazy chemicals in there and we are taking care of the land. Here's a picture of it and it looks nice and you're being part of the solution. But the industry is hard to work against.
Speaker 1:Yeah, would you say it's largely due to the fact of not having enough representation at government levels, not having somebody that's willing to advocate, because we always hear about lobbies and different groups, but At what point are they actually producing enough change? Are they actually doing what they're being sent up there to do, or is it just a lot of blowing steam and just blowing smoke up people's asses? It seems like we have enough data, we have enough desire, we have enough people that are wanting to have control over what they're consuming. There should be some changes, but it never changes.
Speaker 2:I would like to see it. Yeah, right now you're facing major tens of thousands of cattle processing things which if you're making a half a cent per head of cattle, you can make major profit. And that's not the profit margin. But I'm just saying an example as compared to a family-owned business like ours. And you got a, you got a you know few hundred head available here and there. You know I need that margin to be a lot more than half a sense. It's got to be kind of high and it's hard for me to start looking at well, how do I, how can I make money and still give a quality product where these big guys are just chomping out cows and hamburger and you know quick Tyson, all these, you know cargo, all these big, big names, and they're just I can't compete. So you kind of got to join them in some ways to, to get your to be part of the system.
Speaker 2:But there are some Walmart of all places has a good program where they it really takes someone as big as Walmart to really do it and here and what.
Speaker 2:What it is is, they work with an organization called 44 Farms and I know some of the folks there and they bought our cattle before too, and then they have their own processing plants and they have their own stockyards and they cut out a lot of the big guys and they do some direct ish stuff and they sell under mclaren farms. So if you go, they their purchasing agent is prime pursuits and then they sell under mclaren farms and you can go into certain walmarts. They started out I think they were in something like 1500 stores and now they're only in 800 because it got too popular. But you can get high end quality beef for a lot less there. I don't know if they're over by where you are, but we got one. Uh, there's one in merritt island, florida, close to me, that the walmart that carries mclaren farms, and you can find it around there not most walmarts but some, but that's an example of a positive trend.
Speaker 1:Now, what about butcher box? That's some. That's one thing that, like, I'm a big butcher box guy and I I love the quality, or the perceived quality, because I don't know, that's it's. It's been in the back of my mind. It's like where do they source their beef? Are they're really as good as they say are they are, or are they part of the dreaded giant mechanism and we're just, they're just getting our money a different way I think they're.
Speaker 2:I think they're great. I think that kind of stuff is the positive trend, like if you look at Walmart, mclaren Farms, you know Prime Pursuits, what have you like? That doesn't necessarily represent what you want to see, which is Bob down the street who raises his six cows and sells to the local thing, but it's a step in the right direction, away from the major factory production uh facilities. No, and I and I'd like to, and hopefully if we can get some of the rules changed a little bit better to where someone like me that has animals has a desire to sell them to to someone in a healthy way and have my own butcher that you could give me that legal capability yeah, yeah, it would be great to see butchers make it a big comeback in the united states.
Speaker 1:Like that's, I feel more comfortable, being able to like travel abroad and see, like that's my chicken, that's my cut of beef, like I'm gonna buy that and I'm gonna cook it, and I've never gotten sick, never like I've traveled even to some of the worst out, some of the worst outstations, being able to buy like your food off local economy. Same in afghanistan no issues there. Anytime I've gotten sick it's been from american food well, we chopped the heck out of goats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, you know the deal we ate them right there. Yeah, it all got stuck and it was darn good yeah, and then that's we've.
Speaker 1:We created this myth of like being repulsed by the idea of seeing where your food actually comes from meat specifically, this idea that it's not ethical to look at, you know, and butcher an animal if you're going to consume it. It's like, dude, like, get outside, touch some grass, go hunting. Like, even if you've never hunted before, being able to understand like your relationship in the food chain is so important, like the amount of people that don't have that right now in the united states is insane yeah, yeah, and another thing that we're doing.
Speaker 2:So I, I work for, I'm a ceo of a, of a, of a venture capital, uh, firm's arm, uh called azulterra, and uh, what we, what we do, is we, we're doing. I think we're in our first round right now. We're looking about 50 million, I think, for our first round of investment, but the idea is to buy land and preserve it for the investors and return a profit and prevent it from being developed, and so we're looking at buying several different ranches, even in africa. We're looking at a couple different things. That's the concept and then there's and uh.
Speaker 2:and then the idea is that you can run a lot of hunting lodges and a lot of other things like that and run cattle and prevent the houses from coming in, do conservation easements and uh, and set, set it up so that it can ideally return a profit, put a five to seven year cap on it to where you're going to have a sell point and an exit plan and then just keep that model going to where you're going to have regular income coming in. And so we just stood that up earlier this year and we've been moving pretty aggressively, working with the University of Florida and a couple other universities around and some farms in Georgia as well as here in Florida, and then we want to expand to Nevada as well. But the whole goal is to preserve the land for what it's meant to be used for and make a profit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, man, you are tied into a lot. It doesn't surprise me though.
Speaker 1:Can't help it Squirrel when you you know in this show we talk a lot about the, the resilience, the mental health aspect that pivot into the civilian world. When you decided to make that move, did you find yourself dealing with any of those like that crisis, that purpose and that identity? Or because you were so rooted in who you were and what your family had done for generations as a rancher, were you able to make that pivot a little easier? Because you always knew at the core like, hey, these are my values. I come from Nevada, my family's ranchers, I know what I'm going to do. I might not know what I'm going to do forever, but a part of me will always be a rancher. Do you feel that part helped you carry through those first months of coming on the outside?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well you know I, I still miss being in the service, so I can't say that I'm cured or I did it all right and I, you know it is. You know the being around, you know, I mean, we all see it. One of my biggest problems with being in the civilian world is, hey, can you have this done by Tuesday? Yes, and then it's not done till Friday and you're like what's wrong with you. Oh well, this guy and I was like I'm going to go grab John Michael.
Speaker 1:Stay right here. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Who's hooting? You can't hooten out civilians.
Speaker 1:Even though I'd like to, I can totally imagine that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't have that TPS report done, don't worry, I got somebody for you.
Speaker 2:That's a struggle but to be honest, danny, I do think it's hard. I told you I kept my clearance for a little bit and did some consulting and was on some 1099s of a couple of companies. I'll tell you here's a secret to that transition and it's not a good one Be an officer, because then they make you stop doing all the cool shit sometime around the 04 rank and you barely get to do it anymore. So people are like do you miss it? I'm like, yeah, I've been missing it for 15 years and even when I was still wearing a damn uniform I was missing it. Oh man, go to the range and watch it. They let me look at the gun. I didn't shoot it that much.
Speaker 1:This is horse shit, yes it is I love.
Speaker 2:I love soldiering I love, I love soldiering and uh, and, and you know they, they take that away from you a little quicker when you're no, absolutely yeah, I was just talking um forest.
Speaker 1:Uh, shout out to that guy. Uh, yeah, of course he did the master plan. He really cheated. Uh, he went guard and he's like I've been a detachment commander for like almost a decade. It's like that's great. That's like that's the ultimate cheat code, usually like officers have to like become a warrant officer to get a few more years to stay on the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do think it's hard, though you know you miss. Thankfully I got a handful of SF guys that live around here, but it's a camaraderie that is gone when you're out Not completely gone, but it's hard to have that show up to the team room and get made fun of by the same guys every day. You can take the guy out of the team room, but you can never take the team room out of the guy.
Speaker 1:No, I always tell guys LGOPS, stick to your LGOPS.
Speaker 1:A hard lesson learned and any paratrooper that spent time in the 82nd knows that acronym and it knows what it means. Like little groups of paratroopers, save lives. We're all going to transition or pivot out into the civilian market and have to figure out that next chapter. You don't have to do it alone. Continue reaching out, continue talking and texting and going to events like being willing to like go to the stupid 5k with some friends, go do a weekend's camping trip. You don't realize how important it is until you're on the outside. You have to continue those relationships. They're not going to just mysteriously continue developing by themselves. You have to put in effort, and I get it. When you're isolated, when you're alone, the last thing you want to do is pick up that cell phone and text somebody. Force yourself to do it, force yourself to go to those picnics, get out, see people. The worst thing you can do is sit in your house, not be active, watching Netflix all day 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, need that vitamin D. Get outside, yeah. And the physical fitness aspect.
Speaker 1:You got to stay physical. That's another thing. I appreciate that you put out there and show everybody the importance of staying active. Like for the vast majority of your life you were active duty. You were going to PT. Even if you didn't want to, you were going to PT. Even if you didn't want to, you were out there getting active.
Speaker 1:When you get out, it's no different. Get motivated. Figure out how to do it, like just go to the gym or connect with any one of those nonprofits out there Team Red, white and Blue, the Catch a Lift Fund be willing to like ask for help and resources. I know it's not easy but trust me, it's worth it. Get after it, kevin. One last thing before I let you go Looking at this industry. If somebody wants to get involved and they're wanting to dive into the world of ranching, what do you recommend somebody would do? If they're in the military right now, they're about to retire, they're about to ETS and they want to establish that they want to go into that industry, what are some advice or some helpful tips you would give?
Speaker 2:First call me or call call someone else. You know that's in, that's involved with it. They're looking to programs. If you are, if you're coming from the, from the, from the soft world, you know they got the care coalition and they have a lot of outreach that you can, that you can be involved in. They can help you find whatever it is you want to go be a plumber, they got things for that too. But in particular to agriculture, there's a lot of veteran owned benefits and grants and ways to go about things, and I think that's that your first step is to talk to people, look for the information that's out there, use the resources that you have and then be willing to take a leap.
Speaker 2:One of the huge values, particularly if you're retiring, is we don't have huge retirement salaries, but we have enough that you know. As opposed to a lot of other industries, you've got a safety net there. You're going to be able to put food on your table, and so you can. In my opinion, we some advantages where we I don't have to worry about health care, I don't have to worry about a blanket income and uh, and that's that's valuable that I don't think a lot of other 50 something year olds may have with whatever it was you're doing for at&t or whoever, yeah and so, and trust that and trust that you, you, you know you can do that and take professional courses, just like you know.
Speaker 2:One of the advantages when you're in the military, regardless of your MLS, is you're going to professional development courses every year, all the time, random Tuesdays, whether you want it to or not. And being in the civilian world should be no different. I make a rule I will do a minimum of two professional development courses for the cattle ranch a year. I will do it, I will find it, I will invest, I will spend the time and I will learn from others in the industry. I think a lot of us don't do that.
Speaker 1:Lifelong learners. That's the other thing that helps us with that brain matter that you have to be willing to study and dive into reading. I know it's not easy. I dealt with it myself but let me tell you, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, there are tons of resources out there, but the one that gets overlooked is just doing the data, doing the research. Be a lifelong learner, be willing to dive into something and learn it inside and out. I get it. There's 5 million things you would rather do Watch Netflix, stay on Instagram, challenge yourself in the coming year to spend one or two hours a week learning a new trade or learning something new about your current trade, your current job, your profession. We all need to challenge ourselves. You might not have the team or the mission to fuel that constant learning drive, but you can make those rules, you can establish these patterns on your own. It'll make you better. And then, when somebody needs help.
Speaker 1:You can help them through the same process, kevin. What's the name of the book? One more time All right it is.
Speaker 2:The Cow is how, how we fix food farming and food farming and farming.
Speaker 1:If you pause right now, go to the episode description. You'll see the link right there. Please do us a favor, get that book. By the time this airs it will be past Christmas, but if you forgot to send a gift to somebody, hit them up for the new year with a new book. Kevin, thank you so much for being here. Man, again, so incredibly proud to have been able to serve with you, to have known your leadership, your mentorship, and I'll never forget those early months.
Speaker 1:I always talk about this. It's like when did you get the drive or the idea that you want to be a warrant officer? And he's like well, I'll tell you. When I first showed up to ACO, they were all leaving for a deployment to Afghanistan and then I was sitting there in the B-team office just twiddling my thumbs. The first person I see is Major Kevin Key. At the time.
Speaker 1:Walk in, hey, what are you doing? I'm like brand new, 18 Bravo. All right, don't worry, we're going to figure out a mission. And then a few days pass and I'm still in that same b team office no computers, nothing. Next individual is doug, comes in and I'm like oh, hey, hey, chief, it's okay. Uh, who are you? 18 bravo, typical doug fashion, he's drinking a coffee cup. It's like, don't worry, we'll figure out a mission. And then, lo and behold, a few more people join in and, before you know it, that b team had a mission and, uh yeah, the nexus history. And you see, for the first, all it takes to make things happen are just three individuals. You just need three people in leadership roles to make things happen, and that was honestly one of the best trips I ever had as a young Green Beret, because you learned so much in those first rotations, especially with Doug and that guy was a hoot.
Speaker 1:Undurance is fun. Undurance is fun. Yeah, to all you listening. Thanks for tuning in and Kevin, thanks again for being here. Brother, absolute pleasure. You're a legend to all of us in A17, brother. Thanks, danny, I appreciate it. We'll see you guys next time. Until then, take care. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to support us, head on over to buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash SecHawk podcast and buy us a coffee. Connect with us on Instagram X or TikTok and share your thoughts or questions about today's episode. You can also visit securityhawkcom for exclusive content, resources and updates. And remember we get through this together. If you're still listening, the episode's over. Yeah, there's no more Tune in tomorrow or next week, thank you.
