6 Ranch Podcast
The History of Irrigation and Solutions for Ending Hunger, with Fred Ziari
How did ancient civilizations like the Romans and Persians manage to revolutionize water transport, and what can we learn from their engineering today? This episode explores the history and innovations of irrigation engineering with agricultural engineer Fred Ziari. The impact of modern irrigation systems, such as the center pivots that have increased crop yields by 30-fold in Rwandan villages and across the World.
Drawing attention to the efficient irrigation systems in eastern Oregon, which has some of the best in the World, we discuss the critical role of sustainable water management in addressing global food security challenges. Discover how this community-driven organization, formed in response to Oregon's high hunger rates, sees local farmers dedicating portions of their land to grow food for those in need. We examine innovative solutions for water and food scarcity, from advanced irrigation technologies to potential new water sources like reverse osmosis of ocean water.
Learn more about FARMERS ENDING HUNGER and how you can help this very ambitious cause.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
How did ancient civilizations like the Romans and Persians manage to revolutionize water transport, and what can we learn from their engineering today? This episode explores the history and innovations of irrigation engineering with agricultural engineer Fred Ziari. The impact of modern irrigation systems, such as the center pivots that have increased crop yields by 30-fold in Rwandan villages and across the World.
Drawing attention to the efficient irrigation systems in eastern Oregon, which has some of the best in the World, we discuss the critical role of sustainable water management in addressing global food security challenges. Discover how this community-driven organization, formed in response to Oregon's high hunger rates, sees local farmers dedicating portions of their land to grow food for those in need. We examine innovative solutions for water and food scarcity, from advanced irrigation technologies to potential new water sources like reverse osmosis of ocean water.
Learn more about FARMERS ENDING HUNGER and how you can help this very ambitious cause.
Check out the new DECKED system and get free shipping.
Check out NICKS BOOTS and use code 6ranch for a free gift.
I work in Rwanda where in one year we could increase the yield by putting this together it's a small, all of these villages. We put this center pivot system and we could increase the yield by 30 times, 30 times. That's pretty significant and I could see it with my own eyes. All of a sudden, within a year when I went back, and within a year when I went back, the mud hut will be tearing down and become concrete and modern houses because people were producing so much more.
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Speaker 2:Sitting in Hermiston, oregon, this morning with Mr Fred Ziari and we are going to talk about a few different subjects, but what we're going to start talking about is irrigation. This is something that affects every single person on the planet. Unequivocally, irrigation affects everybody, and the history of irrigation is truly fascinating and I'm curious, fred, where did it start? Where do you think the first group of people or civilization was that thought I'm going to move some water to get this plant to grow?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you so much. It's an honor to be with you, james. Really, you have to go back thousands of years. There were really three major civilizations, what we call hydraulic civilization, because they found a way to use water in an effective way and as a result of that, they became a big civilization and a big empire. And there are the Roman, the Egyptian and the Persian. The Roman use of water was through what we call aqueduct, where they determined and figured out from really high-level engineering how to go to a mountain, like you know, 100 miles away, build this elevated aqueduct, bring the water all the way to the cities and serve their water. So you bring water from a mountain, which was a high rainfall area, and you brought it to the dry area overland. You could still go to Rome and see the aqueduct going right into Colosseum. You can see the arches and so on, and they were very effective. As a matter of fact, they have a very luxurious living, swimming and fountains and so on.
Speaker 2:Probably one of the first truly opulent societies in history. It was.
Speaker 1:It was. You know, they have entertainment and they had fun. Those Romans, because of that water, figuring out how to use water.
Speaker 2:How important was concrete in their ability to create the infrastructure to be able to reduce grade so that they can move that water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm an agricultural engineer. My specialty is irrigation engineering. When I visited there, I was just dumbfounded. No engineer can go to Italy and not be humbled by their engineering. I mean, it's just amazing. So, all of these civilizations, they had also great engineers that made it combine their engineering and the growth of their civilization. Yeah, concrete and use of arches, especially arches, how to put things over land or elevate it, maybe 30, 40 feet and bring the water. That was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:The Persian was another, which I am a Persian. I was born in northern Iran, right along the Caspian Sea, and, as a matter of fact, my last name, Ziyari, means people from the village of Ziyar, and it's interesting. I moved to the United States when I was 18 years old and that was 52 years ago. Farmers were bragging about that they are. They were from, they're fourth generation farmers and they were wagging their finger at me. Am I supposed to be really impressed with that? So damn right, there aren't that many fourth generation farmers. I beg to differ because my family been farming in the same place for about a thousand years. That we know of the Persians found the opposite of what the Romans did. They developed what we call they would go to the mountain again where there was a high level of water and rainfall, and then they went down like 100 feet shaft and they would dig a canal underground for hundreds of miles and they come to a city or a village and that technology is called canot.
Speaker 2:I have a question about this Because I feel like I might have intimate first-hand experience with this in Afghanistan. Yes, they called it the Kerez there.
Speaker 1:Yes, the Afghanis are also Persian Right.
Speaker 2:And were influenced by Alexander Correct.
Speaker 1:Well, we taught Alexander everything he knew, because he didn't want to leave Iran. When he got to Iran he said oh, this is it. Why am I going back to Greece? I love it here and his generals and all of that were at arm. He married an Iranian queen and he just didn't want to leave because of all of the civilization he was exposed to and Alexander the Great he was exposed to.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and Alexander the Great was a tremendous student. I think that was one of his, you know, most underrated strengths.
Speaker 1:So when you say that you taught him. You very much did. I don't know. We all learned from each other. You know we are one really global community. Nobody has one leg over the other, that's my feeling.
Speaker 2:But we are all learning from really the past which came to the future, which is now that Kerez system had a tremendous impact on warfare in southern Afghanistan especially in the Helmand province.
Speaker 2:So these underground aqueducts, if that's a fair way to call them, called the Kerez. A lot of them had fallen in. So if you go to Google Earth and you look at the Helmand Province of Afghanistan, you'll see all these dots in the ground. That is right, and that's exactly what they are. And they restricted troop movements in a really significant way. This is really interesting. They controlled our lives. The Kerez controlled our lives in Afghanistan more than the enemy did. Wow, and it's something that I've never heard talked about outside of the troops who were there until now. And, yeah, truly amazing. So keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the Qanat or, if you want to say it in Farsi if there's any Persian listeners, qanat, that's how they say it which is used in that part of the world. It is underground aqueduct or canal. It goes, you know, 50 miles, 100 miles. So the beauty of that is there is zero evaporation. The water is always, when it comes, is very, very cold because it's not exposed to the atmosphere. It is very clean because it's purified. But the amazing part of it, how do you go underground with certain slope for 100 miles? So when you come out, when the water comes to a town, it is on the surface or maybe 5, 10 feet below surface. That was the engineering marvel and there are very detailed studies of it. How they did surveying. They would do underground. They would have shafts every maybe 500 feet or 1,000 feet, and that's why you see from Google Earth. You can go and see it and most people will say how come there is all this line and you see a mound every thousand feet.
Speaker 2:Those are all I cannot, and this is maybe 3,000 years ago.
Speaker 1:But they started a long time ago. I don't know exactly, but thousands of years they've been using it and because of that that's what part of their you know that's why they lasted all these years and they became, you know, at one point the Persian were the largest Empire on the planet, kind of the Roman and Greece, and at some point the Persian, the Egyptian again, that's the third leg of the hydraulic civilization, is the Egyptian right which really developed the technology of floodplain. They would go to Nile I've been there many times, I've been there many times and they would. When they allow the water to, when it rise, then it would, during summer it would go down and they would use that as an irrigation and irrigated field. But they also developed what we call the many different, using animal to lift water from the Nile. They use manpower. I mean you could go still see many, many innovation that they did how to raise the water from the Nile, bring it 10, 20 feet into the surface and develop irrigation system.
Speaker 2:And this is so important that the metric of horsepower today is based on how much effort it takes to lift a certain amount of water over a certain period of time.
Speaker 1:Correct, yeah, correct, you know. And majority of time we use gravity with a little bit of lift. Little bit of lift. That's why the aqueduct in old Roman Empire and the underground aqueduct in Persian Empire were more or less using gravity. And that's why I come back to why today is so different. Right, because we don't have to depend on gravity.
Speaker 2:We're fighting gravity now.
Speaker 1:As a matter of fact, water in most areas. If you come to eastern Oregon, which is one of the most productive farmland in the world most productive farmland in the world is that we learned that the water moves upward by use of pumps and the new technology we can move water massive, many, many miles, hundreds of miles away. And that's what the new technology but the Egyptian, you know, we all read it in our history, but they all play the role and it came back to what we call era of England or Great Britain, which kind of developed that technology of water in a massive way back in 1600, 1700 and they developed the water wheel and how to and also put the steam engine using water steam engine, put it in their big vessels or warships that could travel really fast and they took that title of leader of the water civilization. The Dutch did the same thing. They knew how to use water.
Speaker 2:And water has so many tremendous properties. So many tremendous properties, but it's about 800 times denser than air. Correct, tremendous properties, but it's about 800 times denser than air and steam, to my understanding, is an expansion of about 1600 times greater than than liquid water. So the energy potential there is incredible when you add heat to it absolutely water is.
Speaker 1:You know, I always believe most of the time that when we have so much of anything it becomes invisible. Air is invisible to us, water is invisible to us Sometimes if you live in a forested area, you know forests become invisible. We don't I mean literally don't see it. Sometimes if you live in a poverty. Poverty becomes, hunger becomes invisible if you have too much of it. And water is one of those unique chemicals that most people take it for granted. But again, I think it's one of the most amazing substances that we have that really sustain life on planet earth. It takes so many forms, you know solid and liquid and gases, and you know it's just amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that you use the word chemical to describe water, because it cracks me up sometimes when people will say things like well, I don't like any chemicals on my food. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, I think chemical is a correct uh word for water and people like us that we make our living in water is we know how all the phases of water and how to use it really to benefit.
Speaker 2:Can water become a plasma? I don't know. I don't either. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around plasma. I never got a clean understanding of that one, but that's an aside.
Speaker 1:But you know it was about late 1800. The French were building, I believe, Panama Canal and they were failing miserably, where the United States came and took it over and said this is how it's done and we built the Panama Canal and right after that we built the largest dam system, which was the Hoover Dam. In the 1930s we took the mantle of the new hydraulic civilization. From 1900 to almost 1960s we built one hydro project, hydropower, hydro reservoirs, canals, whatever it is, one of them per day for over 60 years, 70 years straight years, 70 years straight. And as a result of that, we changed America where we used to be.
Speaker 1:Almost in the late 1800s, like 50, 60% of us were working in the farm. We became so starting in 1970s and to this date, we became like 98% were not involved. Only 2% were involved in feeding us because of all the amazing infrastructure we built, and then 98% we freed them to go develop America in technology and technological advancement, medicine, you name it. What made America great is because we unleashed this human potential to go not worry about their food, because 2% of us today is almost 1.8% of us as a farmer are really feeding not only America but also rest of the world. So Microsoft and Google of the world and all the other advancement in technology. There is a reason it happens in the US and it didn't happen in China.
Speaker 1:As a matter of fact, china's Achilles' heel is still to this day, is water, and they are late to the game and they are doing something, but they still have a tremendous amount of water deficit that they have not met. Amount of water deficit that they have not met. And where we are fully, we are fully hydraulically connected. You know. So if you live in Los Angeles or California, we bring water for thousands of miles into California. And so the same thing, if you come to eastern Washington, you, you know hundreds and hundreds of miles of canal and water and pipeline and so on, bring water from Columbia River, for example, and distributing it to millions of acres of land in both Idaho, washington State, oregon.
Speaker 2:That is the new way we have developed and it helped America to become America, in my opinion, because we became so productive, especially inropower from eastern Oregon and we can send that energy to California so that they can take that water and make it move uphill once it's there.
Speaker 1:Right. You know, in my professional life I developed this large-scale irrigation project in the US and throughout the world. We've done work in over 35 different countries. I mean, I have a map of it.
Speaker 2:There's a beautiful map here in this boardroom, here, and this is probably, you know, probably 12 feet by 12 feet, and I see stickers all over of the places where you've done water projects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been all over in Africa, central America, russia, ukraine, you know, and North America, all over Brazil, and we develop really large-scale projects you know we don't maybe 5,000, 10,000 to 100,000 acre projects that we get involved and we develop the engineering, design and oversee the construction of it design and oversee the construction of it and we also provide all the related brand new modern technology to make it very, very efficient. And that's really important because if you look at it from irrigation perspective, we have an irrigation efficiency around the world of 30% efficiency.
Speaker 2:How do you define efficiency in this regard?
Speaker 1:You know, if I take 100 gallons or 100 liters of water and I use 30 liters and the other 70 liters goes to waste that's the efficiency I understand liters and the other 70 liter goes to waste, that's the efficiency I understand. But if you come to like eastern oregon or eastern washington, our irrigation efficiencies and how we do it, how we manage it is is exceeds 95, is 95, 96 percent effic Probably the most efficient system in the world is right here. I love that and we have people from all over the world. I really enjoy sharing what we learn with the rest of the world and the reason that is important is that there is about is a population is a big issue that most people, most nations, don't pay attention. They give lip service. The same way with water they give lip service like United States water. They give lip service like United States.
Speaker 1:We haven't developed any water project last 30, 40 years, 50 years. We just stopped. We developed all of that. We got to a point that we are, you know, pretty comfortable with our food and water and so on, but we stopped. I believe that's not right, especially for America. We need to continue development of water and water projects and there needs to be a great collaboration between the state and the agencies and the farming communities and community at large. We cannot stop. We've got to go forward.
Speaker 1:The reason is we are adding somewhere around 300,000 people a day are born Right. Every day, babies. There is, let's say, 100,000 people die or something like that, and there is a net increase of between, let's say, 80 million new people are born every year, net. Whose responsibility is to feed that many people? And where do we feed that many people when, at the same time, every single day, we have about 50,000 people are dying of starvation every single day? For some people that are compassionate, like I am, I think that's really important. We need to do our utmost to feed our fellow human beings and our rate of hunger is increasing every minute. Every minute is increasing because of this population explosion. We are at 8.1 or 8.2 billion people. In 2010,. We were 7 billion In 2010,. We were 7 billion In 2000,. We were 6 billion. That's a billion people per decade. Who's going to feed it? Whose responsibility is it? And is that the farmers need to do it? Maybe, but when the farmer go and talk to their state or talk to their federal agency, very little support.
Speaker 1:Oh let's do this together.
Speaker 2:And whenever we start talking about numbers like a billion, it's almost impossible to conceptualize. So I try to break that down for people a little bit in a way that maybe they can understand it. So if a billion is a thousand million, right? So if we go to the Grand Canyon to its deepest point and you were to take a stack of dimes and go from the bottom to the top, that would be one million. So you'd need one million stacks of dimes from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of the Grand Canyon to reach $1 billion. So this is a huge number. This is a massive number, correct, yeah?
Speaker 1:And it's a. I've been talking about the hunger issues, our responsibility as a citizen and the farming community because, especially with the irrigated agriculture, you can, let's say, if you want to feed a million people, which is in a week, we add a million people to the world's population in a week. If you leave it to the world standard, you need, roughly it would feed one person per acre. So you need a million new acres a week. So you need over 50 million new acres if you use the traditional farming.
Speaker 2:And an acre is the size of a football field, with both end zones Correct. So that's how much land every single one of those million people require, correct. And then how much water is needed.
Speaker 1:But if you now, if you take that instead of depending on this is on what we call no irrigation, but if you come, like we have right around where I am, we have over 200,000 acres of irrigated agriculture and we grow some 50 different varieties of food, which is really a very diverse amount of food that we raise and that 200,000 can feed about 10 million people. So about 50 person per acre. So all of a sudden, from one acre to 50 acre or one acre to some area 30 or 20 or 30, you could really increase productivity. Like in one acre of land. Here we grow lots of potatoes. We grow about 40 tons of potato in a 200 by 200 feet, roughly an acre. 40 tons of potato can be grown with a really modern technology, irrigated agriculture, efficient way of doing it. 40 tons, sometimes more, that's lots of food, that's lots of calories that you can feed the world.
Speaker 1:I think at the end, depending on no rain, agriculture will not be sufficient. We need to fully develop our irrigated agriculture, use it in areas that we can. For example, in eastern Oregon, where I am, we have a massive. You know the second largest river in the US, you know, first is Missouri River Mississippi. Then second largest is Columbia River. In the state of Oregon we use about three-tenths of one percent of Columbia River. That's all. It's so massive and we use very little and for the last 30 years we have not been allowed to take any water out of the river For whatever reason environmental reason and so on. But I think it's a pretty good deal. Like you take a very small amount of water and you can feed from three-tenths of a percent 10 million people. That's a pretty good deal and that should be a global model on how we should feed people and use water efficiently. As I said, over 95% efficiency, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:A lot of the irrigation that occurs in this area comes from center pivots Correct and center pivots, for those who don't know, are a circular pipe that uses arch technology that moves around in a circle in a field and has hoses that drop out of the main line and then has a sprinkler at the bottom that dispenses a set amount of water.
Speaker 2:They're really incredible technology because at the outside of the pivot of course it's moving much, much faster than the inside of the pivot so you need to manage the amount of pressure as it goes through there and have sprinkler heads that are dispensing water in, you know, in different sizes and frequencies. You know the folks at Nelson Irrigation have done a truly incredible job of developing that sprinkler technology to increase that efficiency. Something that concerns me, fred, are some of the pivots and areas where they're drawing water out of aquifers and those aquifers are dropping and that's of concern to lots of people. You know we look at water levels and, like the Ogallala aquifer, that are dropping in the aquifer in southern Idaho, and then some of these closed basins like we have in southeast Oregon where they're not necessarily refilling. So when we look at moving into a future with, you know, adding this population of humans that needs to consume more food, that needs to have more water put on it. How do we manage all of this Like? Is the future bleak? Is it hopeful?
Speaker 1:No, that's why I said sometimes, really, it takes a collaboration of what we call society and farming community together, in collaboration, together. We need to address this together. There is no togetherness right now, right, anyway, yeah, you know, in the US farmers are, you know, they do whatever they do, or whenever we try to go and talk to our state agencies and you know it's just like a soviet style, not is what we farmers want. They just want to say, hey, you know, we have, we have issues, we need to feed people, that we feel responsible for it and we need to collaborate together, but do it the most efficient way. And we know, again, we have a global model which is in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington. It's a global model of efficiency. Let's just replicate that throughout the world. As I mentioned earlier, the global irrigation efficiency is 30%. Let's get them from 30% to 70% or 80%. You mentioned about the center pivot. They are readily available and they should be used in lots of the global communities. We know how to do it. We know we need to work with them. As I said, we work in over 30, 35 countries and we really show them how to do it the most efficient way.
Speaker 1:There are things so we can really do something to increase productivity with the use of proper amount of water. We have, like, if you come here in this 200,000 acre, we have close to 3,000 sensors, real-time sensors that measure soil moisture, and it goes through the satellite and it goes to our farmer's iPhone. They can see it in real time, where is the water, and then we make a recommendation to them when to irrigate. How then we make a recommendation to them when to irrigate, how much to irrigate, how many hours to irrigate. I mean really what we call precise amount of water needs to be applied, precise amount of fertilizer. Don't overdo, don't abuse it, because over, if you have a choice of over irrigationirrigation or under-irrigation, you're better off. You get more crops from under-irrigation than over-irrigation. So, proper use of water if you apply it the same way, it's just like you can't expect a person to drink 10 gallons of water or 50 liter of water a day. We die. So you can't put too much water to a crop, because they die. They need oxygen in their soil and you put too much, all the oxygen is out of the way and the crop almost wil wilt with too much water.
Speaker 1:So there are a big amount of technologies that are available to our communities in the US and throughout the world that really can make increased productivity by minimum of 2x, 5x, 10x. You know, I work in Rwanda where in one year we could increase the yield by putting this together. It's a small, all of these villagers. We put this center pivot system and we could increase the yield by 30 times. 30 times. That's pretty significant and I could see it with my own eyes. All of a sudden, within a year when I went back, the mud hut will be tearing down and become concrete and modern houses because people were producing so much more. But there are big, big technologies that we really know how to use technology to conserve. For example, you said the aquifer Ogallala Aquifer. We really know how to use technology to conserve. For example, you said the aquifer Ogallala aquifer. We've been promoting a concept called aquifer recharge, or sometimes it's called aquifer recharge or aquifer ASR aquifer storage and recovery. They're two different technologies.
Speaker 2:Which is like a scaled-up version of the CREZ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but this one, for example, ogallala, or you go to Missouri River every year it floods. During those times we really need to take those water which is in excess and filter it which is really not that hard and put it back into the ground. Some areas doing it. We've been doing it successfully in eastern Oregon for the last 30, 40 years, where the water level came up by hundreds of feet. Sometimes we call it fully recovered where it was going down, down, down. Now, using this, we really are recovering through this aquifer recharge.
Speaker 1:There's a tremendous amount of potential for this everywhere in the US. But it does need the collaboration of regulators and regulators that really trying to work with you. Lots of times you bring these ideas, any technology. The first thing they do, especially in North America, they knock it down. There's all kinds of problems with it, but you know problems are to be solved and we can do it together, but in collaboration. But you mentioned something about grand canyon and how many a billion is I? I do see the same problem. When, when we say and I said it you know like 40, 50 000 people die of starvation every day, most people cannot relate and I don't know how to make it. I can't come up with any fancy word to say it or fancy statistic to say it. You talk about a baby dying, or your baby or your cousins or somebody you know. People can't relate to it right away. That's not fair, right. But 40,000, 50,000 people that goes over people's head. They almost disassociate themselves because that's too much pain to even understand that. But that's real.
Speaker 2:One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
Speaker 1:The same thing when, when you consider water, six billion out of 8.2 billion people on the planet don't have access to safe drinking water. Six billion lots of them drink raw water, and I've seen it with my own eyes everywhere I go around the world. It's just like you know and anybody travel to Africa or even in the US. We are not immune from dirty water, but there are issues. We need to address it. There are, you know, there are technology. As a matter of fact, I have some new technology that I'm going to unveil, Hopefully this is going to solve has a global impact on how to make water more available, which would be, another podcast.
Speaker 2:Yes, look forward to that. Okay, so with this hunger issue, if we were to go west of here to Portland and grab a random person off the street and say, do you care more about salmon recovery in the Columbia River or about irrigation in the Columbia Basin, there's a good chance that they would say that they care more about salmon recovery. I believe that if you took that same person and and you took away their next seven meals right, seven, seven of the meals they're planning on having they don't get to have and then you come back and say, do you you care more about salmon recovery or do you care more about food? Yeah, right, which is directly related to irrigation, I think that their values would have changed in that very short time period, right, okay, so now we're going to move into hunger. When did you realize the hunger crisis that's occurring in Oregon?
Speaker 1:On the hunger issue. I don't know who said this, but I really like this quote he who has bread has many problems. He who has no bread has only one problem. Hunger is a horrible thing. Horrible thing that we still have not been able to face it straight on. One of those things so prevalent, it becomes invisible to you. Maybe you become numb to it I don't know what the name is to you, maybe become numb to it. I don't know what the name is.
Speaker 1:About 16 years ago, I went to a meeting in southeast Portland and I sat in a group of people and they were talking something very strange to me and they were talking something very strange to me and they were talking that how Oregon if any of you haven't been to Oregon is the most beautiful state on the planet, bar none. It's just beautiful people, beautiful scenery, just tranquil, the weather is good, everything is good. And in that meeting it was January. I wrote the date because it was very significant to me that I learned that Oregon, the state of Oregon, this most beautiful state, was the hungriest state in the United States at that year, in the United States at that year. And not only that, they've been in that position for decades. For decades that rate of hunger was tremendous and still to this day it is tremendous in our state.
Speaker 1:During that meeting, somebody mentioned an experience they had with Mother Teresa where he met he was our ambassador to United Nations, met Mother Teresa in Calcutta, india, and he was bringing all these babies. You know she would bless them. Most of them would die. Maybe she saved one or two of them and he was our ambassador, was really moved by it and he says you know, I represent the greatest country. What can I do for you? And Mother Teresa said this, which I never forget she said do what is in front of you, do what is in front of you, do what is in front of you. Lots of time. That means, oh, we got to go to Africa, we got to go here, we got to do this, we got to do that.
Speaker 1:But what I learned that night? That Oregon was one of the hungriest states and I was driving back to eastern Oregon that night. That Oregon was one of the hungriest states and I was driving back to eastern Oregon that night and that thought, if you go outside of my office, there's a big thing, big poster. It says do what is in front of you. That's the whole thing about our company. Don't look for a solution elsewhere, it's right in front of you.
Speaker 1:So from the next day, that night, I made a really crude PowerPoint presentation about what I learned and I had almost two to three months of daily meeting with my farmer friends in Eastern Oregon and I asked them two things. One did you know that the state that you were born and your fathers were born, your ancestors were born and you are one of the large farmers is the hungriest state in the United States? And every single one of us had no idea. We never heard that before. And second question I had would you dedicate a small portion, not a big amount of land so we can purposefully plant food for hunger relief? Not, you know before that, it was all you know. We cannot sell it in our grocery stores or give it to the poor, or food are going back. Let's give it to the hungry, which is not, you know, really sustainable. We wanted to develop something sustainable and, based on that initial meeting, every single one of our farmers said, yes, let's do it. This is a great idea and that's where we formed this organization called Farmers Ending Hunger, and you can go check it out farmersendinghungercom. And it's purposeful planting. I don't think anybody else has done it this way. It's purposeful planting of food for hunger. And that means you go.
Speaker 1:We went to the Oregon Food Bank or food agencies throughout the state said what is your need? I said our need is not to be overwhelmed with so much food at the end of harvest. We need food every month. So many of them every month. Okay, so based on that we formed this organization and we also had a board of directors farm.
Speaker 1:So I give you some example. One farm will give us 30 tons of potato. That's lots of potato Every single month. At the end of the month there is 30 tons of potato goes to for 12 months out of the year, goes to Portland, oregon Food Bank and then from there it is distributed to all of Oregon and also southwest Washington. Another farmer gives us 20 to 25 tons of onion. I have to recognize my friend Bob Hale. He used to be the original owner of it. He just passed away a year ago. He was so generous 20, 25 tons of onion every month.
Speaker 1:Another farm gives us 30 cows. Just right here, a few miles from me, they give us 30 cows per month, every month and they've done it for two decades. Almost Every month, 20 cows. We take it, we slaughter it and we turn it into quarter pound hamburger and we distribute 500,000 of quarter pound hamburger to people that need it. Another thing is some of the farmers give us wheat and we turn the wheat into pancake mix enough for five million pancakes and we distribute it. Another farmer in Hood River gave us hundreds of thousands of pounds of amazing cherries. Right now they're picking cherries and they distribute this for people Watermelon and beans and peas and everything on a monthly basis. So we give our organization about five million pounds of products that we give.
Speaker 1:It doesn't tax any one of our farmers too much. Even during really high prices they could have said no to us, but some of the farms you know that's worth $100,000, $200,000. To them it's not inexpensive but they do it. And that's where your example of going to downtown. You know salmon is a food source and I value salmon because we need more of them, but you were making an example of hunger. We don't need to make this choice. I always said that agriculture is our business. Farmers, you know this is our business, but food is everybody's business. So we need to change. We change our language from agriculture to food, and everybody wants to collaborate and cooperate. We we have lots of partners that give and help out. All of the food is free. What's the name of this program? It's called Farmers Ending Hunger.
Speaker 2:And you started this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I started it in 2000,. That day, right after, I heard the message that we need to do something. That is in front of us, that was in front of me, and they're still going very strong. They're very proud of it. Our farmers really were so generous.
Speaker 1:All you need sometime and it was interesting the way I presented it was hey, you know, if you need a haircut, you go to a barber shop. As you can see me, I don't need to go to a barbershop. If you need shoes, you go to a shoe store. How come? If you need food, how come you don't go to a farmer and ask them to help, ask them to be involved, and they are. I mean, it wasn't that hard. You're just asking the right question and asking them to help, and they were very generous. They still are. Could be throughout all of our United States and other countries. We could do this. This is not, you know, don't take it from one person. Ask them to contribute and ask. We really also figured out how to do the supply chains and all of that. We had a really amazing board of directors that were big businessmen and let's do that you have to figure out the logistics machine behind this.
Speaker 2:With margins being so low oftentimes in agriculture, is there a way for them to offset the the cost of this?
Speaker 1:as a matter of fact, the majority of our farmers say we don't want any subsidies, then, as a matter of fact, we will pull out because that's again goes back to community base. This, this is our problem, it's not government's problem. We should be generous and that's what is our fellow American, our fellow Oregonian, it's not the strangers. No, I don't think anybody expects any money back. We do need some funding to transport Transportation is and sometimes packaging it. We've got to be bagging it and freezing it or put it in a shelf life that has a long life. All of our product is free. We don't need any money. Farmers are given plenty of food. Some people want to contribute or help out. Go farmers ending hunger. It's a program we call Adopt an Acre. You can adopt an acre or a quarter of an acre that feed 20 people, or one acre, again, can feed so many people and, depending on what your generosity and your heart tells you, you can, you know, adopt an acre or half an acre or quarter of an acre.
Speaker 2:How much does it cost to adopt an acre?
Speaker 1:I think it would adopt an acre. An acre would be about $400 or $500, something like that. Or you can do a quarter of an acre for $ about four or five hundred dollars, something like that. Or you can do a quarter an acre for 40 bucks or 50 bucks. All right, it doesn't matter, all right podcast listeners.
Speaker 2:Uh, we're, we're going to, uh, we're going to adopt at least an acre during this show. So if you go to the show notes in the podcast description, you're going to see a link and you can go directly to that link and I'm going to price match the first $100, as I always do with these fundraisers and Six Ranch Podcast is going to adopt at least an acre here and we'll see if we can do more.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's very generous. Thank you, James. This is what it's all about. That's very generous.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:James, this is what it's all about. We don't really fundraise for the sake of fundraising. We don't have any overhead. All the food goes to the people that need it the most and the needs again anybody in America or around the world, especially last few years because of the upheaval we have in Russia and Ukraine, and the whole thing has been messed up. The price, and you know some of the inflation issues we have again. I'm not political, but everybody feels the price of food, you know, is really high. People have choices to make you know, shelters, education, getting to make you know, shelters, education, getting to work, and so on, but a lot of time the food become sacrificed, uh, because there's just nothing left food, water and shelter is what it comes down to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ultimately yeah, so thank you so much for well, I, I mean it.
Speaker 2:it's amazing, it's an amazing problem. I think that it will always be a problem, but it is something that we can work on. Something that's come up in the past when we talk about water shortages which do occur is that we're surrounded by ocean, and I've heard it said that we don't have a water problem. We've got a salt problem.
Speaker 1:Can you break that down a little bit more? I mean, there's lots of countries that use ocean as a source of their fresh water. It is a doable thing. We need to promote more research in that area. Very little goes on. It's more the whole reverse osmosis that we did Expensive, mainly energy rich countries use that more so it takes a lot of energy.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:But I am convinced of this. Again we came up. You know I have a startup company started three years ago. You know we came a very novel way of producing water very inexpensively, probably the most inexpensive way, but that's later to be discussed.
Speaker 2:Are you doing that with the atmosphere?
Speaker 1:We do it different ways. Really, our technology is based on nanotechnologies nanotechnologies, but also, I am convinced, if any of you haven't used AI for your work or your business, I really encourage you to take that. I think AI will be amazing leaps and bounds in how we develop technologies. We have used lots of universities. That sense of urgency for me is not there. I'm gonna do research. Just decades ago and I said you know, that's not acceptable. If we have those sense of urgency, we need to really get serious about water and producing more food and producing, especially on the water issue, drinking water issue. We just got to blow it up and some of them traditional water resource development, building storage. We hardly build any storage in the United States anymore and the minute you mention that, you know there's all kind of barrier put in front of you.
Speaker 1:Again, it's just like what we talked about agriculture. We used to talk about agriculture. We got to do that. We change our language about food. Now lots of people outside of agriculture want to talk about food and how they can help. Like we just did right the same thing with water and water development. You know we need to change our language about hey, we're going to do this we're going to. Let's talk about solving problem for our fellow man, for a human being, and the way to do it.
Speaker 1:We got to carry our weight in the United States. We can do more to produce more food. We can be more generous in doing things to relieve water. Bring our high level of technology to the rest of the world in how to do. Maybe desalinization is one of them, but there is a range of technology that we could do it today. It's just not acceptable to drink. I mean, I saw people drinking just raw sewage water or raw water from creek where they wash their cows and their animals, and it's dirty. Most of them get sick and that's why most of them are young kids that get sick in sanitary. Lots of them die every day.
Speaker 2:Is there anything we can be doing to cool water?
Speaker 1:Cool water.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's right underneath us, right underneath our feet. Right, you can put the water again, that's part of that recharge we talked about. You can put the water right underneath it, like here you go 10, 20 feet, the water, the earth is about 50 degrees. You want to cool it, you know, just put it 10 feet and bring it up. Maybe, I don't know, there are again, we need to get creativity of engineers and scientists to pay attention to this. We could solve it.
Speaker 1:I really believe these are not whether it's energy, whether it's water, whether it's agriculture and feeding. Again, that's where my interest is. I hope people pay attention to it because that's a basic human need. We could really focus and bring the world's attention to these things. It doesn't need to be always our government doing it. They just need to enable people with their creativity to do it.
Speaker 1:I think we could go a lot further, but don't get in people's way, because lots of times, technologies that are really viable they die because of regulation and over-regulation. And I'm not saying remove all regulation. We've got to have a sane thing, but you know, you've got to put it in perspective. When people are dying of thirst, 99.99999% is good enough, is good enough. Where? Here. You know, because of our technology and sensor we can measure purity to billionth of a part per million. I mean, it used to be part per thousand, part per million and now it's part per billion. You know, sometimes we got to see it in perspective that we are. You know, we are good enough. Yeah, see it in perspective that we are good enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if we can dig an underground water tunnel system in Afghanistan and throughout Persia, 3,000 years ago. I'm pretty sure that we can figure out how to take water in the Columbia divert it, use that natural cooling of the ground, put it back in the river and cool this thing down.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that is going to be a really positive thing for the fish for the Pacific Ocean, absolutely, yeah, so again, we are blessed to have men and women that are working on the fish issue, because that's a food source right and it's important for our environment.
Speaker 1:And it's important, you know, and we are more and more aware of it. So we don't need to fight over this thing Again if we can figure out a way. You know. Look at our politics. You know it's always confrontational. Always confrontational when you know it's just okay. A problem is presented, what's to confront about? Just find a reasonable solution to that problem, rather than you're, you know, we call him names and get upset and all of that. I think that's lack of civility and our leader should be exemplar of how we should really solve our common problem.
Speaker 2:A lot of the confrontation that Americans deal with today is confrontation without any implication, correct? Today is confrontation without any implication, correct. So we can have these arguments that superficially feel very confrontational, very adversarial, but nothing comes of it. It's static, it's just noise, it's not fulfilling, it's a lot more fulfilling.
Speaker 1:No, the needle doesn't move. And everybody can do it.
Speaker 1:Really in your communities. If you're whatever your communities you're doing, you don't need to do big things. Lots of times we get so shocked by the system that we got to do all of these big things. We got to do the reverse. We got to do the reverse is true. We got to do a lot of small things. It really will have a impact if we, as a citizen again. You know, I wasn't born here in this country, but I was converted to this country and, like all comfort, I'm zealous about America.
Speaker 2:I really am.
Speaker 1:I love everything about it, with all of the ups and downs, but we Americans are very, very generous people. We develop so much stuff and we readily from technologies to medicine, to science and whatever and we just freely give it away to the benefit of mankind. And that's the way I see it. And we need to really america and american need to work a little bit more, pay attention to some of these basic stuff, which is food and shelter and water and air.
Speaker 2:My challenge to people is to try to find that thing that right now is invisible to you. Notice that it's in front of you and do something about it. Just like you said, it doesn't have to be a big thing, it can be a small thing, but if a lot of people do a small thing, that's pretty big. That's pretty big. What are some other ways that people can support your efforts in ending hunger?
Speaker 1:I would say ending hunger. You know we need to have the rural area and the urban centers need to come together, form an alliance. Last week we had a big gathering. People came from Portland and the big cities to our eastern Oregon town. It was a program called Economic Development by Eastern Oregon Women Coalition. All of our daughters and wives, they're all really very active on how to promote economy. Lots of time guys used to do it, but now they've done an amazing job. I was really pleased, especially our mothers and our daughters and so on. They should be a big part of this solution when it comes to hunger, because they are the ones that are feeding our kids most of the day. And but I mean it's just like getting the especially the urban centers and the rural centers, people working in the big cities, reach out. Call any farmers. How do we work together? And we are trying to reach out the same way to Portland or to Seattle or to bigger cities. How do we work together?
Speaker 1:There's all kinds of noise, right, but some of the solution again, especially in the hunger issue. In my opinion, nobody. With all of these hundreds of millions of acres of farmland we have, nobody should go hungry in the US None, zero. We should have zero tolerance for it. There's no reason. But you know, just focusing is what we need. Collaboration is what we need. Really solving problems together is what we need. Collaboration is what we need. Really solving problems together is what we need, and the government and agencies need to help and enhance that together.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you, and for the folks in the urban centers, I really want you to take this advice and give it a try, and I'll use myself and the Six Ranch as an example. We rebuilt two and a half miles of river going through the ranch to make it slower, to make it deeper, to make it ideal habitat for trout, salmon and steelhead. We gave up some of our most critical grazing land in order to do this. What we need, in order to continue doing these types of things, is for people to buy our product right. So if you buy the beef or the produce, or the eggs or the, or the lamb or the wool or whatever that comes off of, off of a ranch that's doing this type of thing or off of a farm that's trying to do something like this, then that's how you are supporting this positive, sustainable food system.
Speaker 2:You know the water in rivers tends to get warmer as it goes downstream. When the water flows into my place, it is warmer than when it leaves. So we we we fight against the natural physics of of rivers and we're actually able to cool it off with a way that that river works. Please do reach out to these places and find ways to support them and then find ways to to continue that support in areas that are closer to you, still so, so important Other ways that they can follow along in what IRZ is doing.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so my company, irz Engineering and Consulting, as I said, we are a design, build and manage. We provide engineering design for this very efficient irrigation system pumps and big pipes and this center pivot or drip irrigation and how to put them together. Again, this is larger scale and also we provide water management services. So we do quite a bit of work on having the sensors in all of the field and these sensors measure soil moisture. We also measure soil fertility and all of this data comes measures soil fertility and all of this data comes and the weather. We have like 80 weather stations just around this area in Eastern Oregon, just our Hermiston area, where all of these data comes in and we turn it into crop models for like 50 different crop a potato and a wheat and a corn. All of these crops use different amounts of water on a daily basis. You know they are different. So we model it and we measure it also by soil moisture sensors and then we provide that to the farmers as a way to really what we call precision irrigation Apply water precisely, don't put too much and don't put too little. We tell them how many hours to run their sprinklers, how many inches to put it in. So it is something to marvel and that's why we see the highest yield of any crop in the United States happens right here in what we call Umatilla and Morrow County or Columbia Basin of Oregon and Washington, highest producer of any crop by many, many factors, any crop by many, many factors. Like a potato that is grown in Africa, they would yield maybe 10, 12 tons and we can get 40 tons or 45 tons. It's a big, significant difference because of the level of technology we use.
Speaker 1:Automation is another big thing. All of our farms are fully automated. It means we can turn our you know, doesn't matter 10,000 acre. I can turn hundreds, hundreds of valves on and off just using my iPhone. Put just a small amount of fertility or fertilize it through water, so it is not what we call spoon feeding Just a small amount, I can turn it on and off, I measure the soil fertility and I say, okay, this is how much water and fertility you need. So it's a good, balanced, very efficient way to farm and irrigate and so it's a kind of a marvel. I'm very proud of our accomplishment. We just, on May 7th, we just celebrated our 40th anniversary of our company, irg Engineering. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's a pretty big achievement for a dude from Persia, iran, coming here in Eastern Oregon.
Speaker 2:They treated me extremely well and I'm proud to be here Well shukran, thank you for your time, thank you for everything that you're doing, and I'm hopeful that this podcast community can come together and help support what you're doing and work on the thing that's in front of us right now.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you so much, thank you very much, thank you very much. Thank you sir.
Speaker 2:Bye everybody. I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages. Your support is incredible. I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.