Trent Loos has the uncanny ability to share his passion for animal agriculture with a good mix of humour.

Loos, a Nebraska rancher, was one of the featured speakers at the Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium in Saskatoon.

He is much more than a rancher though. He has a radio show called Loos Tales, is a blogger, has written a book and is undeniably one of animal agriculture’s biggest cheerleaders when he is out on the road — which is a lot. He could likely make a go of it as a stand-up comedian.

Did you hear the one about …?

There was the time, a number of years ago, when Loos was in Chicago O’Hare airport and was talking to his wife Kelli, who was back at the ranch. He has referred to himself as the husband of a rancher.

“Before I left that week I had weaned three sows in a pen near the boar. Kelli just had to heat check them, semen is in the basement, she breeds them. She told me they are not in good standing heat and I blurted out, ‘Well I wouldn’t waste semen on them.’ I started looking around and I thought the TSA was going to cart me out of the place because there was some wacko over here.”

Loos said farmers, much like Rodney Dangerfield, don’t get respect. And the work they do is misunderstood. He talked about a recent flight he took. “Apparently I don’t look like everybody else. They will, ‘oh, what do you do?’ I think they think I am headed to Hollywood to try out for the next Tombstone movie.”

He told a woman on the plane that he is a rancher. She told him how much she and her husband love farmers and they hope to have a ranchette someday. They would like to have a horse, a milk cow and some chickens.

“Nobody ever says, ‘By the way, I would like to have a sow so I can raise my own bacon,’ but they want all these other things,” Loos said. “Then the big question: ‘Do you grow organic?’ ‘No, we quit that in 1952; it didn’t work for my grandfather either.’”

The woman said she doesn’t buy anything that isn’t organic and is willing to spend hundreds of extra dollars a month to get it.

Loos noticed she was having a Starbucks latte. He pointed out that her latte contained chemicals such as caffeine, which is a pesticide.

“She gets out her phone and goes to Google and types in ‘caffeine pesticide.’ ‘Oh shoot.’”

Loos got her.

“It is better living through chemistry and getting people to understand the basic concepts that improve human lives and that’s what we have to do. Caffeine is a wonderful thing; it serves a purpose.”

He encouraged delegates at the symposium to get out and spread the word about the work they do.

“We have to tell the real story. The real story is what individuals in our countries have done to take the God-given natural resources and convert them into the essentials of life: food, fibre, pharmaceuticals and fuel. The basic premise of life is everything lives, everything dies and death with a purpose gives full meaning to life.

“That’s what we do; we manage life. We create death because only in death can something else live and that’s where the real fundamental flaw and disconnect comes in. People don’t understand in order for you to live, in order for a plant to live, in order for anything to live, something else has to die. So, what we do is we manage life and create death so we can improve the planet and improve human health.”

Loos, a sixth-generation farmer, and Kelli have 100 cows, 100 sows and 30 horses on their ranch.

“People still romance the old ways. They want to have access with their iPhone to every single thing that is happening in the world. They want all the technology; they don’t even drive their car anymore. The car drives, they do everything with technology, but when it comes to food production, they still want you there with a pitchfork and in a pair of bib overalls. “

Everything we do has been about improving efficiencies and improving the planet and improving human life and that is the purpose of animal agriculture. We have to start telling the story of the people we impact.

“Who are the experts in animal care? Those of you who have been doing it for generation after generation.”

He said at one time it took five acres to feed a person for a year. Now, with efficiencies, one person can be fed for a year on one-third of an acre.

“It wasn’t because of some A&W marketing campaign.”

He once stopped at an A&W in Moose Jaw. “They were running that no-hormone beef campaign. I walked in and said, ‘Can I get a hamburger with hormones?”

The young person at the counter said they don’t have burgers with hormones.

“I said, ‘thank you, see you’ and I left. And that kid wondered what had just happened.” The lesson is that hormones are a necessity.

“You can’t live without hormones and yet they have been demonized and you get more hormones from your soy than you will from a piece of beef or pork, but who knows that? It comes back to education.” Loos said the book he wrote has helped with that.

“I learned the best way to educate people is through that third-grade book. More mothers and fathers got more out of that third-grade book than they ever did reading science reports.”

“You walk them through the number of hormones in every food group from split pea soup, to beef, to lettuce, to soy, and there’s nothing wrong with hormones. That’s the bottom line, yet people want to avoid them, why? It’s because they don’t know.” His radio show has three million listeners daily. That’s spreading the word. He said producers can help, even if it is one person at a time.

“Start in your own families because your family has people who are not directly involved anymore that hear all that (negative) noise. We cannot afford to be quiet. We cannot afford to sit on the sideline.

“I truly believe the most sustainable thing that will ever happen is we will bring back a world full of people that appreciate and understand and respect the effort the farmer has gone to improve the planet and improve human health.

“And most importantly, we talk all day and night about technology. I have a computer at home feeding my sows, a little old 100-sow operation. We can talk all day and night about the technology, but what makes the technology work is you. It is still about people taking care of the land to improve our fellow citizen.”

And that’s no joke. •

— By Cam Hutchinson