This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
Walt Bones has spent his whole life on the farm, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s one of the most well-known advocates for the state’s agricultural industry.
His involvement and impact has stretched across the South Dakota Farm Bureau, South Dakota Corn Growers, South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association, the Ag Advisory Council, and Groundworks-Midwest.
He also served as the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture and on Gov. Daugaard’s Ag Advisory Council.
Bones joins In the Moment to look forward at the technology of the farming future. But he also looks back at his childhood spent in the cab of a tractor.
Bones is a new inductee to the South Dakota Hall of Fame.
Lori Walsh:
You are listening to In The Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm Lori Walsh. Well, it is hard to talk about agriculture in South Dakota without mentioning Walt Bones. His involvement and impact has stretched across the South Dakota Farm Bureau, South Dakota Corn Growers, the Cattlemen's Association, the Ag Advisory Council, and Ground Works Midwest. That is just a small slice of the resume there. He also served as the State's Secretary of Agriculture and on Governor Daugaard's Ag Advisory Council. Now his service and contributions to the industry are being recognized, as he's inducted into this year's class of inductees in the South Dakota Hall of Fame. He's with me now in SDPB's Kirby Family studio. Welcome and congratulations.
Walt Bones:
Thank you so much. Appreciate that.
Lori Walsh:
What does the Hall of Fame mean to you? Certainly you've seen peers and other state leaders be inducted.
Walt Bones:
For many of your listeners, if you get a chance, go on the website and just look down through the list of previous inductees. It's really humbling. There's some friends, mentors of mine as I've gone through the industry and folks that I've thought so highly of, and to have an opportunity to join them there in that shrine is ... again, it's hard to explain. One of the things, Lori, that really is special for me is that my dad was inducted in 1988.
Lori Walsh:
Oh, nice.
Walt Bones:
There is, I think, only two other father/son teams that have been inducted there. Again, it didn't start out as a lifelong goal. Twenty years ago, I didn't say, "Hey, this is what I want to do," but you just do what you've got to do. We will get into that, I'm sure, but I've been just extremely blessed with the opportunities that I've been given.
Lori Walsh:
It seems like you've said yes to a lot of requests.
Walt Bones:
You've been talking to my wife, haven't you?
Lori Walsh:
Requests for service, requests where people have said, "We need you here. Would you be willing to do this? Can you do one more thing?" How did you make decisions about stepping into those leadership roles, knowing that, yeah, your wife's got a tally?
Walt Bones:
When we're in an industry, I think it's really, really important to be engaged in that industry. There's a saying that I used as I was traveling around the state as the Secretary. "If you're not at the table, you're probably on the menu." That spoke to me a lot. Frankly, some of it was probably a little selfish too. I mean, some of these organizations give you an amazing opportunity for some personal leadership and skills development. They'll send you all across the country to learn how to communicate, how to talk.
Again, I've been blessed with my wife, my kids. I farm west of town here, southwest of town, with two brothers, a brother-in-law, and now three nephews. There's their help and their understanding, and that we grew up in a family. Again, my dad was extremely involved. He was in the legislature for 16 years. My mom was very involved. Public service in our family was held in very high esteem. I got a lot of support there from the family, to represent them and represent our industry.
Lori Walsh:
Go back to some of the earliest memories you have about farming, because there's some homesteaded land in your family, so you must have some early memories of the joys or the travails of ag.
Walt Bones:
That's a great question. Yeah, there's a lot of highs and lows, sometimes within the hour or within the week, within the years. I mean, there are those valleys and then there's those mountaintops. Yes, as you mentioned, my great-grandfather homesteaded down there south and east of Parker in 1879. The original homestead ground is still in the family.
Our situation was just a little bit different. My dad actually grew up in Minneapolis, and even though his dad was born there on the homestead farm, my grandfather, there wasn't enough room on the farm to support both he and his brother and his two sisters. One brother stayed on the farm and my grandfather went into the hardware business, ended up in working for the Maytag Corporation, and ended up in Minneapolis as a regional sales manager. My dad grew up there, but there was always that you can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. My grandfather was still very involved, and it started as some of his own things separate from his brother.
Yeah, my earliest recollection of the farm is just the joy when my dad said, "Hey, you want to ride along?" I think part of it was somewhat necessary, because that seat to the right of the driver is the gate-opening seat.
Lori Walsh:
Exactly, and the gate-closing seat.
Walt Bones:
Yeah, the gate-closing seat. "Yeah, let's go check some pastures. Oh, by the way, would you get the gate for me?" That type thing. No, again, we were very supported. Again, it was just a joy to be a part of the farm.
Lori Walsh:
Did you talk on those rides? Did you talk with your dad, or did you just look out the window?
Walt Bones:
Oh, all the time.
Lori Walsh:
What'd you talk about?
Walt Bones:
All the time. I mean, some of the challenges, and just the joy and the blessings that we have to be able to see this Creation that God made that we are temporary stewards of, and have the pride and to see the trials and tribulations. There's an extreme amount of pride in getting the job done, being creative. I mean, one day you might be an electrician, you might be a mechanic, you might be a welder, you might ... whatever.
Lori Walsh:
You might be a garbage man.
Walt Bones:
Yeah, exactly. You pull weeds, you pick up rocks, but you get to drive a tractor. Probably one of the memories that really sticks out was our eighth-grade graduating class. We were going to celebrate ... this was a long time ago, by the way ... and we were going to celebrate by having a roller skating party over at Wall Lake. There used to be a big roller rink out there. My dad made me an offer, and he says, "I'll tell you what." He said, "I could really use some help Saturday, driving a tractor and a disc." He said, "I will let you have the tractor with the latest technology on it." I mean, this is the most sophisticated tractor that we have, and I couldn't resist. I skipped my eighth-grade party to drive a 60-horsepower 560 International tractor that had ... wait for it ... power steering. That was the latest technology.
Lori Walsh:
Oh, man. That story delivered, yeah. In that regard, you're watching, and I was driving through South Dakota just a couple of weeks ago and I remember passing a certain operation, and looking out at the way that the hay was lined up and the curve of the harvest. I was like, "That farmer's an artist. That has to be intentional." It was so beautiful and cinematic that it felt like somebody had painted it for me to see. Now, that probably isn't true, but it felt like it. At the same time, you have this AI, and this new tech and looking at the future of climate change, and looking at the future of robotics in the field and the harvest. Take a deep breath and tell me what the future looks like for ag in South Dakota.
Walt Bones:
Bring it all together. Again, usually when I'm looking forward, I'm also looking back. I can't remember if it was Tanya Tucker who had the song, “I Was Country Before Country Was Cool.” Well, I mean, we've been active environmentalists before there were environmental activists. We've been cutting down on our tillage, so I cringe sometimes when we talk about carbon footprint and carbon intensity scores and all these different things, but that's what we do on the farm. We are constantly looking for a better, more efficient way of doing things, better for the environment, better for our financial bottom line, better for the future. I've got three nephews now that will be our fifth generation on the farm, that are actively farming there with us. The future of our place is in great hands.
AI, I was at the TEDx talk down here a couple months ago and heard a teacher talk. The technology, AI technology, is as primitive as it will ever be. I mean, it's only going to get more. Twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, driving the autosteer on our tractors. An expensive tool. People say, "Really? You can't drive your own tractor? Really?" Well, there are so many other things going on in the tractor and the combine and sprayer, whatever it might be, that you literally don't have time to drive.
Some of those, looking forward, the combine that we just got a year ago automatically now makes some of those adjustments. It senses the moisture level, the crop flow, the efficiency and the speed and all those types of things, and will make those adjustments on the go automatically if you let it. There's a button right there. You hit it and it goes off. Automatically it will make those adjustments for you. I don't know if I'm quite ready yet for the autonomous driving vehicles, but I expect it may be coming.
Just the sophistication of what we're doing right now, trying to understand the makeup, the biology of the soil. Trying to understand some of the GMOs is the buzzword, of course. Instead of using chemistry, instead of dumping poisons on the ground to control pests, insects, weeds or whatever, now through biology, we can do the same thing. We don't have to dump. I can vividly remember my dad one day. One of the hoppers on the planter was for an insecticide, and this black powder. It was windy. He was sweating. He was wiping this stuff off his brow, and you look on the bag and it had a skull and crossbones on it. We don't have to do that anymore.
Forward, the air that we breathe is ... I forget, 40, 60% nitrogen, while we put extra nitrogen on the ground to grow our corn or wheat. How could those plants maybe pull some of that nitrogen out of the air as a nutrient, rather than having to put it on as a fertilizer? There's some amazing people working on some pretty amazing things, and so I am extremely optimistic about the future of farming. I really am.
It's going to be a fascinating, fascinating occupation for so many. I mean, you don't have to own a farm to be involved with agriculture. We need these technicians. We need mechanics. We need all of these different things, to produce food on a decreasing land base for an increasing population. The challenges are there, but I've got a lot of confidence in this next generation and the future of ag.
Lori Walsh:
I want to go back to something that you said earlier, about going places and learning about communication and leadership. Talk to the young farmers or the young people who are moving up in any kind of servant leadership in any industry. What are some of the things that they need to keep in mind about not just their own communication, but their own values? Because there's so many distractions, so many different ways. There's going to be a crisis, and you're going to have to deal with it. Somebody's going to make a mistake, and you're going to have to answer for it. What are some of the ways to keep your values and your center when the storms are swirling around you?
Walt Bones:
Ooh, that is a really great question, Lori. I don't know if I've ever been asked that before. First, I would start out and say that you can't do God's work without God's blessings. We've all been blessed with some amazing skills. The old horses used to have the blinders on them so they couldn't see everything, just what's right in front of them. That's what I've told a lot of these younger folks, is that sometimes we get so embroiled with the water tank that's froze up or the tractor that won't start or whatever. I mean, that is an immediate crisis, you think, but look at the bigger picture.
I think that's what the involvement ... in any organization, pick your organization ... that involvement gives you that big-picture view. That's where the focus, I think, needs to be, is what long-term is going to be good for our farm? What's going to be good for South Dakota agriculture? What's going to be good for United States agriculture? Those organizations do a great job of providing that training. It's these young kids that just have to get involved, because that's the future of our organization. They don't want to hear from me anymore. I'm old.
Lori Walsh:
Well, we kind of do.
Walt Bones:
I'm retired. I'm done, figuratively. It's these young kids, and when I say young, that's 30, 40-ish. They're the ones that really need to get in.
Lori Walsh:
Walt Bones, it's been a delight to meet you and talk with you. Congratulations on the induction into the South Dakota Hall of Fame. It's well deserved. Appreciate your time.
Walt Bones:
Oh, anytime, Lori. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
