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I mentioned earlier this morning one of our co-chairman judge raymond a Burt's and a multi-generation Delta family from holly grove our other co-chairman also multi-generation Delta family Ritter Arnold a fourth-generation family member he's the executive vice president of the Ritter and company which many of you are familiar with he has worked in his family business for 35 years he's held a number of leadership positions across the Delta everything from the Arkansas boll weevil eradication foundation to the krypton Regional Hospital to Methodist family health to East Arkansas boy scout council for the Arkansas agricultural council I could go on and on serves on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Foundation Arkansas Research Alliance our control chapter of the Nature Conservancy deep deep roots in the Arkansas Delta and it's time to talk agriculture he'll introduce our other panel members so please welcome our co-chairman of this conference and our moderator for this panel Ritter Arnold Ritter all right we're going to get everybody re-energized after that after that wonderful lunch if you enjoy the catfish at lunch stand up all right you may sit back down now I think you are almost y'all are almost there if you have an account with Simmons banks stand up yeah I want to thank Simmons bank for for putting on this seminar we hope it's just the first of several to come I'd like to introduce our panelists this afternoon first we have with us Matt King from Arkansas Farm Bureau matt is Farm Bureau's director of market information and economics and he's last minute fill-in for Randy Beach who could not be here today so Matt we appreciate you Freddie black down at the end of the table freddie is a producer and the state market chairman of Simmons bank freddie is from Lake Village he's a graduate of the University of Arkansas and farms in chico and you say counties with the re Pickens and Sons partnership I've also heard that he's an avid turkey hunter Andrew Robb Meyer andrew andrew is the executive vice president of the Agri Arkansas agricultural council which advocates for Arkansas agriculture andrew is a graduate of SMU and his previously served with Senator Mark Pryor and first District Congressman Marion Barry and the Cynthia Edwards Cynthia is our Deputy Secretary of Agriculture for the Arkansas agricultural Agriculture Department she is a native of dewitt has her law degree from UALR law school of law and her master's of law and from the University of Arkansas law school she previously worked in Washington with senators bumpers and Lincoln between 1987 and 2011 so welcome palace we've talked a lot today about change in the in the Arkansas Delta its life has just been continuous change and using 18 using the Year 1800 as our starting Fort Point a lot has changed at that at that very first time of one way to make a living was to trap hunt fish and trade with the Native American Indian population that came and went pretty quickly following that the timber industry got its start I think all of us are familiar that eastern Arkansas used to be one giant hardwood timber stand but the timber industry came and then and then it eventually left row crop agriculture came and stayed by the civil war the South was producing 75% of the of the world's cotton and the the demand for raw cotton at that time was insatiable during the Civil War in Arkansas as elsewhere plantations were dismantled and and slaves were emancipated rolling forward to the year nineteen of to the 1900s the first rice was planted on the Grand Prairie sharecropping and tenant farming emerged as agricultural production systems and an interesting phenomena that that emerged even even back in roughly 1920 the populations of Monroe Prairie and Lee County's Pete in 1930 Arkansas planted three and a half million acres of cotton cotton was planted in all of Arkansas's counties that year but five and shortly thereafter the mechanization of Agriculture started I think the tractor was the first the first agricultural machine that showed up and tractor at that time was capable of replacing the labor of between five and six tenant families in the next decade following the introduction of the tractor of the population of ten more eastern Arkansas Delta counties Pete then the last half of the 20th century that was when the some people refer to it as the great migration started tenant farmers started moving from the farm to town and then from town to the industrial north the cotton picker was developed some of you here in Pine Bluff may be familiar with the name of JD rust he was the inventor of one of the early early cotton pickers he moved here to Pine Bluff and contracted with the been piercing being Pearson manufacturing company to produce mechanical Pickers during nineteen fifty the population of Phillips points that in st. Francis counties Pete and so since that time we have seen agriculture continue to continue to change and evolve since the since the turn of the century Arkansas is now producing about a million and a half acres of rice annually roughly three three and a half million acres of soybeans cotton which was being produced at the rate of about a million and a half acres around the year 2000 has fallen off to under a half a million and farm equipment as we all know has continued to become much more efficient a six row round bale picker at this time now has the capacity to replace a 600 hand harvesters and as a sign of the timing times craighead green and Lone Oak counties have become centers of retail medical and industrial activity and are growing significantly so panelists for the for the first 100 50 years the Delta was joined at the hip with agriculture as when agriculture so went the Delta so Freddie I'd like to I'd like to pitch the first question to you but what are some of the most significant changes you've seen on the farm in South Arkansas during your career thank you doing I stopped at the farm on the way up here today and I talked to my son who's now back farming and I asked him I said what's the biggest challenge we face on the farm today and he said for me it's finding a wife to move southeast arkansas there's a dating service again but he just sent me her sinha did a snapchat if anybody or familiar with snap chatting and it was driving a 966 international tracker they've gone to my father who quit farming in 1991 and he said you know a throwback to simpler times and I guess mechanization the equipment were using today is one of the greatest changes that's really impacted the way we farm we're covering a lot more acres of course there's a lot more capital involved in owning that kind of equipment but that's impacted labor it's just change the way we do business and you know combines costing for a thousand or the cotton picker you're talking about over 600 you can't farm six or seven hundred acres and owned today's equipment and hand in hand with that is the technology involved in operating that equipment which changes completely the kind of person you put on a tractor or combine or sprayer or fertilizer applicator so technology and equipment I think are two really big changes that have impacted way we do business another part of change that we all witnessed in our lifetime that's let us survive is irrigation and the varieties were planting today the yields that were able to enjoy help us at lower prices and you know we never when I was growing up if somebody made 40 bushels of soybeans it was you know time to celebrate now that's the crop failure but you know we didn't have the irrigation we did now if you've got a farm and you can't irrigate it it's hard to find somebody playing anything on it other than maybe hey or week so the the landscape has changed with irrigation and certainly with technology as a relation equipment and and our varieties but what of all these changes that you've seen done to life in the Delta how have you seen it change the towns in chico desha county well it's it's your job of courses we raised Tommy Garrett's and audios he works with me we're talking about how is our local Country Club don't survive you know in the 80s and 90s we had 250 members now it's 140 and it's just a matter of numbers of people farming in the Delta we're a thousand acre farm was a nice size farm and you've had a good middle-class income that farm won't it doesn't exist today and so that's changed it you know the country club is just an example of the impact in a small town that you can't support a lot of things you used to you know one one more thing that people don't realize I always think about money coming into the Delta and I also always observed when it leaves and all of the providers of our farming input now inputs now are mostly owned by private equity companies in New York or wherever whether it's you know CPS or greenpoint or Sanders those companies are making money on Arkansas farmers but the profits don't get reinvested here they lead the state years ago everybody had a little farmers co-op the farmers were all part of it any profits that were made with cloud in the community in one way or another are reinvested equipment for the next year and so we're seeing up an exodus of money profits that are made at the expense of the farmer that used to be here that are not anymore so Andrew let's talk about how things have changed just in the last couple of years you work with row crop producers all up and down the Mississippi River Delta from from Missouri down to Louisiana what changes are you seeing today in row crop agriculture well I want to first thank Simmons bank and and Ritter and judge Abramson for bringing this group together and and as executive vice president the agricultural council of Arkansas I think we're pleased to be a part of this and pleased to know as Rex mentioned earlier that this kind of spawned from a meeting that we had in Marianna last year and I think it's an important discussion to have across the board regarding the Delta but to answer your question about the changes that that I've seen I've been involved in an agriculture policy I guess for about 13 years I've seen a fair amount of change but it then it's all occurred in the 21st century and I think that that it's happening faster and faster and faster these changes as they come and it's it's happening all around the world and and the United States and the Delta at large is going to its survivability an agriculture and and economically otherwise is going to depend on on the availability of technology we're seeing technology drive everything and we're experiencing quite an evolution there and what I see going forward is a lot more as we see satellite technology come about wireless technology come about broadband the cloud the internet of things that's happening it's it's quite amazing and to be able to communicate all that through social media and things like that is quite amazing and it's all happening at us as I said a velocity that's almost hard to imagine and wrap your head around but but going forward I think it's going to be a whole lot more automated which has happened over the years but again it's it's in an accelerated pace and I think the Delta I think Arkansas farmers and Arkansas AG businesses have have a great opportunity in capturing the benefits that come from that from from technology development business development to the productivity advancements that come with that and the profitability that as a result of that so really it's just an exciting time I think but one that also brings a lot of anxiety and reluctancy I guess of change but if we do not change then there's going to be a point at which we fall behind Cynthia of all of the panelists you may have the most unique perspective from a statewide level what changes is the Arkansas Department of Agriculture seeing on a from a very broad with a very broad brush across the Delta first let me thank Simmons and all involved to this is a great event and the Arkansas Agriculture Department really appreciates the opportunity to talk about agriculture because it is our number one agency industry in the state and is so important to our economy I also bring best regards and regrets from secretary reward he would have loved to have been here today but ironically he's actually on another Delta add another Delta meeting as we speak and so he governor Hutchinson put him on the DRA Delta Regional Authority leadership team and so he's in an event there otherwise he would be here too but as far as statewide and just the changes we've seen Freddy and Andrea really touched on the technology change which is a huge piece of it and I won't go into those details they did but i think the exciting part of that is other than just the avenues that opens up for us i think it does make agriculture more exciting career for younger people i think it does bring younger people to the industry and that's something we desperately need you know from the average age of farmers or if I nice 58 and there just is people are going to keep farming if that age very much longer if they don't have to and we do need younger people coming in I do think the technology does make that an attractive field form and it does bring so much in the ways of our natural resource protection and I was talkin to a farmer that is doing a lot with water conservation he said you know wish we could have done this 10 or 20 years ago but we didn't have the technology to make it feasible it really is making an impact on the conservation of our natural resources that we all have to have to continue to make this a great place to live another change I'm we're seeing out there is that traditionally we have a pretty decent-sized specialty crop industry in kind of Arkansas River Valley in the movement some of Northwest Arkansas as well we're starting to see more specialty crop production in the Delta and that's a big change and it can be a hard change because it does bring its own instead of challenges to bring those different crops in the middle of row crop country but we are seeing farmers who have a smaller acreage who are able to make a pretty good living with that those specially crops fruits and vegetables and vegetables in particular and we get calls at the AG department on a fairly regular basis from large companies on either coast looking for especially crop growers in our part of the state without tell you one of the reasons that is our national resources but we take a group of specialty crop producers to a produce marketing show every year it's an international show in their countries all over the world represented there and I had on an Arkansas groans shirt and I was walking through the the convention center of the trade show and this guy ran up to me and grabbed my arm and said where is the Arkansas booth I've got to get growers from Arkansas because we all have water he was working with folks in California and Texas and who has going through these terrible droughts and he said y'all have got the resources out there and we need to tap into that and get your growers going what we need and that was my first year at the department that was five years ago and we have seen a steady increase of those kind of calls that we get in in the department and we've had some aquaculture producers who had changed their ponds over its especially crop production they've had a very good success that's something we may see more of I know organic production is growing too and that's something I really never thought we'd see that much of here but some of these specialty crop growers are realizing that the demand is out there we have a sweet potato producer in Arkansas from the largest su potato farms in Arkansas and also in the east and south but they demand for organic sweet potato that they were getting was just constant they couldn't they just weren't growing them so they've actually partnered with the grower this year in and around Augusta in near White County and they are growing sweep to organic sweet potatoes and are putting in a small processing facility over there just to Washington not to further process and but just to bag them and store them there and that's going to bring jobs to that earring that's a big change so it's exciting time there's a lot of potential in agriculture and the delta certainly a good place to capture that Matt let's let's drop back just a little bit and talk about the decade to save it started in 2003-2004 the the decade following that year that year was really a great year for a lot of producers in Arkansas well what was going on back then what made that such a good decade for Arkansas agriculture we've seen a big boom in Arkansas agriculture over the last last few years and it really started back as you had some droughts in the Midwest and others that boosted commodity prices and it gave off gave Arkansas an opportunity to showcase like what Cynthia and others to talk about our ability to grow whatever because the in the past Arkansas about a one and a half million acres of cotton well the cotton prices did not respond like some of the other other crops did and have we've seen a lot of producers switch out here in the state of Arkansas and start growing things like corn and soybeans corn is a great crop for us here in Arkansas just because of the irrigation the efficiency that we have to produce it but also our producers here very unique from some of some of the counterparts around the United States and that we have two markets for it we have the poultry market that's growing in Northeast Arkansas the PECO is put in a new facility up there going to start demanding a lot of corn from that area but then you've got tyson foods that the pot the facility here in Pine Bluff used to have a lot of rail facility now that's fed one hundred percent by Arkansas Arkansas corn growers and you've got other areas in the river valley where most of that corn is fed by by Arkansas producers and that offers a huge premium for growers and it's for its cause more infrastructure investment instead of instead of farmers delivering everything at harvest they now build the bins and things like that they've got 190 million bushels worth of worth of storage is with usda estimates is here in the state of arkansas and that helps producers manage their manage their crops it's another tool in the tool belt to make sure that whenever it comes time to harvest we don't have we don't have to rely on the elevators for going to wait in long lines can take it to our own facilities they're drying and handling it themselves and and it's it just gives a lot more market opportunities allows them to take advantage of some different markets agriculture here in the state of Arkansas is about a 20 billion dollar plus industry about five million dollar five billion dollars worth of that or ten billion dollars worth of that's actual products the other 10 billion would be some of the value-added the other induced effects and things like that of Agriculture but oh that 10 million ten billion dollars half of that is is raised here in the Delta with row crops poop poultry production other livestock and forest products and if you look at the Delta as a whole ninety-four percent of the land area here in the Delta is some type of agriculture whether that's forestry or livestock and crop land so it's the basis of what the economy is is here in the Delta in the manufacturing sector for all these different agricultural products whether it be me processing timber industry the rice mill 550 million dollars worth the worth of worth of salaries from from that industry here in this here in the Delta so it's a huge part and one of the benefits the Delta has by having agriculture is one of the bases is an agriculture industry it's a more steady industry you don't have the booms and busts in agriculture typically that you have across the rest of the rest of the industry but as technologies and things like that the other panelists would have discussed it's changed the the needs of farmers out there from a career standpoint where folks are no longer going out looking for manual labor hand labor they're looking for more sophisticated labor and the farmers the every dot everything the farmers sell just about as a sister check up which is a self-imposed tax on the growth the growers put on themselves to reinvest in their industry and one of the things the soybean board here in Arkansas started doing this year is provided a grant to the Future Farmers of America high school chapter so they can start going out and purchasing some of this equipment at different high schools to help train those folks that that may not be be going to college but you wanting to stay at their stay in their local town so they can have a skill set so they can come out and run a tractor that runs on on GPS they can they can handle the computers and things like that that agriculture is agriculture is no longer a mom and pop with the the pitchfork the old image that we all have of agriculture that's that's not that's not agriculture today it's a very sophisticated industry where a lot of farmers say they look at themselves probably first as an engineer they have to figure out how to fix something on the farm next they may be an agronomist trying to figure out which chemicals or fertilizers things like that we need to put on a crop and then a marketer there there's very little time left out there to actually be a farmer any more of what most people think of as a farmer there there's all these different careers that a farmer has to be Cynthia Matt I'd like for most to respond this next question exports are a big deal in Arkansas agriculture we export fifteen percent nationally we export fifteen percent of our corn forty percent of our soybeans if we fifty percent of a rice and eighty percent of our cotton so where would we be without exports and what does it take to what's it going to take to support those going forward exports are a huge part of what the farmers do if you think about it for our soybean crop about one out of every three rows of soybeans that are grown here in Arkansas on average would be destined to go to China just think about that now and basically every other row of cotton that's produced here is going to end up in China eventually so I mean we're no longer based on this economy of just just what's going on here locally it's now global global economy for agriculture and what happens in Brazil Europe China those really impact what the prices are going to be for for the farmers here we've done as Arkansas Farm Bureau and the promotion boards here in Arkansas have really gotten involved her last few years in the export markets trying to promote Arkansas because if you think about it most of the most of the foreign buyers that are out there they don't really look they overlook Arkansas they go up to the Upper Midwest and things like that they may recognize this some would recognize this as a rice state most of them don't even realize we grow rice here even though half the rice in the u.s. is produced here in the state of Arkansas they might they'll recognize this for cotton and things like that but these grains folks that folks have overlooked Arkansas for a long time on that and trying to change that perspective because like we talked about earlier with the on-farm storage and things like that that our producers have they also have direct access to the river the river system is vital to agriculture the arkansas river system the mississippi river system and historically has been the white river system unfortunately because of some issues with the the river there the Corps of Engineers lack of investment in that area the lack of dredging and things like that we've seen our elevators close on that river and that's going to be a huge blow for the producers in that area forcing them to go travel much longer distances with their with their commodities but this export market being able to get our products to the river system is is vital to agriculture in it it's a the quality of grain that we produce here is much better will have a higher protein content for our soybeans will have a higher starch content in our corn and that flows back to what the what others have talked about here in the irrigation system we can control the environment in 2008 i think it was when you had this massive drought in the midwest we saw the seven dollar $78 corn prices because the midwest couldn't produce it because of a drought Arkansas farmers produced a record crop that year we had the same weather situation the same perils that they faced in the Midwest and but but our producers had made that investment in the irrigation had the natural resources to continue to produce these record crops and it paid off it cost a lot of money produce those that year but producers were able to take advantage of those high prices and I think that's one of the things we always point out to to international buyers when they come in is we're going to be a consistent supplier it doesn't matter if there's a drought it doesn't matter what happens Arkansas farmers are going to have a crop and the growers that we've had through from Columbia and other places they try to make a purchase in september-october of corn and soybeans because now they realize hey there's there's grain grown in the south it's not been handled it's going to be a better quality we're not we're not going through as many elevators anything that just about anything you look at in the in the elevators or the federal grain inspection service in Memphis it's going to be in number one which is the highest quality grain that you can get now by the time it gets down down the river it's going to be blended to meet whatever those buyers specs are but they recognize we're not going to get get the the poor quality grain Cynthia most everything that we grow here in Arkansas can be can be trucked to a river port and exported and our grain companies do a great job of getting thing loaded and shipped abroad but that doesn't necessarily bring a lot of your round employment back to Arkansas do you think they're going to be any opportunities for further processing and Arkansas and what might the job prospects be with that I hope so Ritter I think there's a lot of potential for that it's it's not easy but we do get I guess companies and our people interested in that they see that that is lacking here in Arkansas we used to have more than what we have now but there's a lot of potential for to grow that even more it's just it always boils down to you know I like a capital in some instances but I think there is a lot of potential and some of that's driven by a consumer demand their products in the whole new you know where your foods coming from there's a big emphasis now by consumers on food safety and they won't know what's in their food where it is and we have had instances where companies are demanding certain type of sustainably grown products or products that are but maybe non-gmo we have producers who can produce those but for the to add value to that we don't have those facilities here and that's something that has been looked down there is interest it's just a matter of I think getting some of the capital together to move forward with that and that's something that we cannot think in the past been pretty try to fund our own things here in Arkansas I think we do need to look outside maybe a little bit if we don't have the capital resources here or the interest and maybe bring some of that into the state because there's a lot of I think people who are recognized how important we are in the whole food production process out there and I think it's we are I think we're poised to really capitalize on that that's good news Freddie a significant force in almost industry in any industry is consolidation did you you see that at work in the Arkansas Delta right now with row crop agriculture certainly everyone's had to get bigger and it's been hard to do because the way our farm policies been driven is is not to benefit getting bigger it's to stay small or the thought that corporate farming is getting subsidized by the US government has been a huge negative in our farm policy but we do have to get bigger one thing I'd like to bring up that is part of that driving that is ownership of our farmland we've got a lot of land in Arkansas that's owned by either endowments or foreign investors or pinching plans or whatever it may be and of course certainly the rent leads the state when that happens but they command a higher rent and higher farm prices have been driven by lower interest rates and investors Jason of returned where for a long time six percent was an acceptable return on farmland now three percent is so those folks are hard to negotiate rent with and so you know we're land of sharecroppers we're renting land in most cases from somebody and the pressure now with low commodity prices has made that more problematic and in Cynthia we need to think about estate taxes again and helping get farm families a break with with these five thousand acre farm land prices it created a state tax problems for a lot of families without that being addressed lie that land is going virtually become owned by someone else because they'll be forced to sell to just pay the taxes to do it it's someone's death so but consolidation gives you efficiencies with the bigger equipment you cover more acres is more timely but what we talked about earlier with irrigation and and that's where we are at a disadvantage to the Midwest is it takes a lot of people if we can get a crop planted in short time we can spray at the short period of time we can fertilize it quickly but when it comes time to irrigate it takes a lot of people in a lot of time so that's part time labor and you gotta scrounge up and June July on all of this to keep your crop alive there's a lot of the expense involved there the Midwest gets our crop in that the coop sprays and fertilizes it and they're done and there they have those farmers are working a job in town so there's smoke more smaller farmers up there because of that Andrew some of our producers are early adopters of Technology and and others are followers are there any particular technologies that you're seeing producers deploy that that most Arkansas producers need to go ahead and get on board with I yeah cross the board I think as I said earlier technology is is here and it's its present and those who do not adopt will be left behind and I think that there are a lot of benefits to the technology that that's coming along and for instance we have a company that this is a kind of a good good AG business news story and based in Little Rock it's Delta plastics that's traditionally been known for its polypipe systems that are delivered to farms but they have taken a software program that was developed through checkoff dollars and created a sort of an Internet of Things software that helps farmers more efficiently utilize water that's that's a technology that that's present here and should be adopted it's a it's a money saver it's a time saver for the for the landowner for the farmer Freddie mentioned that there there's a lot of struggles and irrigating there are other companies that are out there who are again in this Internet of Things space trying to create systems that can manage irrigation you know from a remote location and allow you to do some of these things from it from a distance and again become more efficient and your irrigation use save on energy save on time and save money and the good news is is that Delta plastics is a local based company some of these other companies that are that are furthering these irrigation software systems are also based in Arkansas it's an exciting time I hope that we can be more in that innovative space in agriculture and AG business and figure out a way as a state as a region to connect the innovators the thinkers who can come up with solutions to known problems and create products and services right here locally that will lead to new businesses will lead to jobs and you know who knows maybe one day you can create something you know I'm not pry not the scale of the the big companies in Northwest Arkansas but some pretty significant companies that will be locally based here in Arkansas that will not only be solving these problems locally but also these problems are applicable and other parts of the AG world around the country and around the world and we can this is a thought that I've had this whole time thinking about this conference is a lot of times we in the Delta g t stuck in a mindset of you know what can government or policymakers do to help us and the basic things I think are give us the tools we need to develop the resources we have and Congressman Westerman mentioned all the resources we have Matt mentioned the value of those resources we can add value to those things and I think we as a state need to be thinking more about how important the Delta is from Central Arkansas Northwest Arkansas we're all dependent on one another agriculture is a fifth of more of the state's economy in order to compete in the US market place in the global marketplace if we want to compete as a population of 3 million people against cities that have eight or ten we have to work together we cannot isolate ourselves and and so how can we connect those thinkers to the wealthy the investor class I think there are a lot of different ways we just need to work through that I think maybe I know that there's a lot of effort going underway now in Little Rock a lot of the universities Memphis has some efforts underway on on AG innovation and they're out there trying to find dollars investors for people to come in and support local ideas you know we may not have the software expertise here currently but we can provide a problem to the engineers who can create the solutions so I think I think that's kind of where we're going hopefully we can have some of these develop organically here in the state and again like JFK said that's not what your country can do for you ask what you could do for your country maybe the Delta can solve not only its own problems but the problems of the rest of the agricultural economy in the US and internationally because the population of the world is going to continue to grow the land acreage is not and we've got to figure out how to do everything as if gently and economically as we can if I could reader i'm going to add something to that i had the privilege of judging the governor's cup business innovation award program last week and on the AG team they had seven college teams that developed a product and they were competing for the awards and the winners will be announced sometime later this month but it was very rewarding to see these college kids and the ideas they came up with and the capabilities they had that we had at one team that had a engineer software who's a software engineer who's going to be going to work for Google next month but he was a student here at Hendrix College i believe and they had just done phenomenal projects out there and it was just very exciting and very it's rewarding to see the young people we have here in the interest they have an agriculture they're really kind of fascinated by it and even though they don't really have a direct connection to the farm they have kind of discovered it they think of it as a global issue as it is and they are willing to put their you know the best and the brightest and their ideas and technologies it's just a perfect combination of partnership and so it's really exciting to see what they're coming up with and I think we just need to build on that board man add one more thing real quick the way I like to look at it as far as this technology application goes to hopefully creating new businesses is looking at agriculture on the side of inputs on the the farm land owner side agronomic and then and then the marketing and sales and value-added processing and all technology is going to change all three of those segments and we have an opportunity in Arkansas as you know forward-thinking people as a nimble group a small community to do some things and a lot of times we depend on the big manufacturers and things of that nature to come about and our government come fix the problems but you know I think we can do a lot if we work together urban and rural areas to share struggles and fix problems and corporations are big strong corporations that exist in Arkansas started from scratch they were there were nothing but they wouldn't have been what they are today without you know the idea of the capital and the energy behind it pretty I'd like to ask you the last question to wrap up if there are one or two things that in your opinion our elected officials that are here today need to keep in mind regarding the future of Agriculture as they develop a vision for their parts of the Delta what would those things be well one thing that's always concerning me of course coming from a lending background is a barrier to entry for a young farmer to get into business it's so capital intensive without what we call a family leverage you can't really get started in farming our bank employees a 9010 program which is a guarantee program to that I say that helps highly leveraged farmers get started or helps them out of trouble so we've employed that program extensively in helping young people get started but there's a there's a camp to what that guarantee can be and in today's times a million dollars doesn't farm looks land and so we got to be mindful of that and and make sure that we have another generation to come back and farm the land that's our greatest asset that Delta is our land and we've got to have we got to have farmer without that we're really in trouble so I'm concerned about young people coming in you know my son he and I had long discussions about whether he ought a farm or not for living and you know it's interesting his his generation his friends who grew up in the Delta I want to come back they love the lifestyle they like to hunt fish and be outdoors they're hard workers are smart kids but the opportunities or more limited and and it's all about the capital involved and you know there's you can get out there and work hard and find some way into rent but can you make it work and so that that's a huge concern for me ok I think we're running a little bit short on time so we'll wrap it up there panelists thank you very much let's give our panelists a round of applause thank you very much thank you very much