AoR 164: The King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management, with Rick Machen

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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I'm your host, Tip Hudson, Range and Livestock Specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com.

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Welcome back to the Art of Range. My guest today is Rick Machen. Rick is the Executive Director of the King Ranch Institute, one of, I think, only a handful of ranch management programs in the country of the United States. And I think probably the first and probably still the biggest. No jokes about Texas here. I invited Rick to talk about the program with me because I've been asked a number of times recently about educational opportunities specific to ranch management. Meaning people that aren't sure they want to go get an animal science degree and aren't sure whether that would be the best thing to serve somebody who wants to manage a ranch, you know, not a rangeland ecology degree for the same reasons. But some kind of an integrated ranch management program, whether or not it was a formal degree conferring program. And the King Ranch Institute seemed like a good place to start investigating that. So with that said, I actually don't know that much yet about the Institute or even what it offers, but I'm certain Rick has those answers. Rick, welcome to the show.

>> Absolutely, Tip. Thank you for this opportunity to visit. It's a pleasure.

>> Yeah, I do want to know some of your background, but I think maybe a better starting point is to just start with the program and the obvious question, what exactly is the King Ranch Institute? That name, you know, doesn't automatically sound like something that immediately tells you what it is, although I would make some guesses.

>> Yeah [brief laughter], sure. Well, I'll give you the Reader's Digest history of the Institute, and then we can go from there with questions that you might have.

>> Yeah.

>> The Institute was formed in 2003 when the King Ranch turned 150 years old. The King Ranch family wanted to do something to commemorate 150 years of private ownership of one of the largest ranches in the country. And they're very philanthropic by nature. And they said, you know, we can foresee the need for professionally trained ranch managers for large, complex ranches. And so they came up with the idea of a two-year graduate program, Master of Science graduate program, and they partnered with Texas A&M University Kingsville, which was right here in their back door, to come up with the King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management that has two primary purposes. The first purpose I've already alluded to, and that is to train men and women to be professional ranch managers through the two-year Master of Science program. The other part of our mission is what we call our outreach education. And so we realize, you know, ranch management professionals can't all take two years out of their life and come back to a college campus and pursue a graduate degree. So we offer a variety. I think we're up to about 12 different lectureships. Most of those are on an every other year schedule, over a variety of topics that are pertinent to ranch managers. And we offer those face-to-face, most of them here in Kingsville. And we offer -- also offer those in an online format via Zoom so that folks can participate from the comfort of their home or office, regardless of where they might be.

>> Yeah, I didn't -- I did not know any of that. So the branch program is for students that -- it's a master's program for students that already have a bachelors. Is that what I heard?

>> Yeah, correct. Yeah. So because it's a graduate degree, the requirement is that our students have an undergraduate, have completed an undergraduate degree. And frankly, they come from a variety of disciplines. As you would expect, many of them are animal science, range science, ag business. We've had communications majors. We've had engineering majors. We've had a variety of undergraduate degrees that have come through the program. All of them have been successful. The thing that's unique about our program, as I review the other ranch management programs, either at the graduate or undergraduate level, the thing that's unique about our program is we have historically required our students to have three to five years of work experience, preferably in the ranch, ranching industry or something closely related. Three to five years work experience beyond their undergraduate degree. That does a couple of things. It allows them to demonstrate that, in fact, they are passionate about the ranching industry and want to make that a career choice. It also affords them the opportunity to gain some maturity, which is essential, given the speed or the pace and the rigor of our program here. And so that has been very advantageous in terms of the maturity and the experience that our students have. And as I review a lot of the other programs and familiar with them, many of -- many of those programs are tasked with getting their students additional ranching management, ranching industry or management experience. And so the hands-on component. Our students come with a wealth of experience. What they need is to sharpen their business and people management skills.

>> Yeah. There's some self-selection there where you don't get the person who just finished a bachelors and they couldn't find a job. So they just do the next thing. Not that that's a bad thing.

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah. It sounds similar to, I think I was in the first graduating class of the University of Idaho's Masters of Natural Resources program, which was a non-thesis master's degree intended for people who were going to be going out and managing stuff in the real world. And so it was intended to be, you know, a broad interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary approach that was, you know, a mile wide instead of -- instead of an inch wide and a mile deep. And this sounds similar, but geared toward ranch management.

>> Exactly. And that's one of the biggest differences between our ranch management master of science degree. And frankly, though others around, I wasn't aware that University of Idaho had a program, but other programs, ranch management programs, I think you characterized them all very well. They're a mile wide and maybe a couple of inches deep as opposed to just a very narrow discipline, like many other graduate programs would be. For example, you know, my -- both of my graduate degrees are in animal science focused on, specifically on remnant nutrition. And many others will have, you know, graduate degrees in reproduction or genetics or whatever the case might be. And those serve a purpose, but as you're well aware, you know, somebody that's managing a ranch business has to wear a lot of hats. And so these multidisciplinary broader based programs, I think are better suited for training young men and women to be professional ranch managers.

>> Yeah, I would agree. I felt like the -- by definition, the rangeland ecology degree is fairly broad in that it includes a lot of stuff. And of course, you can't pack everything in. But you know, like for me, I have felt the lack of not having enough background in remnant nutrition. I know a lot about rangeland ecology and a lot of related natural resources stuff, and a fair bit on, you know, beef management, ranch management, but there were places where I felt like I was lacking. And I think these programs are designed to be a little bit more focused on preparing somebody for the task of managing a ranch, as opposed to trying to go out to do potentially a whole bunch of different things like a more generic degree.

>> Right, exactly. And as I've already alluded to the -- a couple of things that we spend a lot of time on with our students is the business management aspect. So managerial accounting is a big part of our curriculum. They'll take a finance class, they'll take an accounting class. And then -- so the business management aspect, the other part is the people management aspect. And I tell students, one of my good friends, a fellow graduate student, it was a gentleman named Dave Delaney. And Dave managed big ranches in the Panhandle of Texas, managed one of the largest feed yard operations in the Northern Panhandle of Texas. And then for the last 18 years of his career, he managed, was the vice president general manager at King Ranch. And King Ranch is a large ranching operation with significant cattle production, wildlife, you know, 800 plus thousand acres. And I've heard him say numerous, numerous times, managing King Ranch would be a piece of cake if I didn't have to deal with people. And so the people management aspect, employee supervision, and how to be a great people manager, and cultivate people underneath you, mentor people underneath you, and help people realize their potential, is one of the greatest challenges of a ranch manager. And certainly, in most undergraduate degrees, you get very little, if any, exposure to the HR side, the employee management side of the responsibility.

>> A couple more questions about, I guess, just higher education. It seems like there's some cultural withdrawal from higher education right now, because costs have gone up a lot. And the market value of a four-year degree, I think, has gone down, at least that's the perception. And my feeling is that programs like this, that still are in the category of higher education, but that have a more specific trajectory for graduates, would seem to do well in that environment. So I'm curious, one, you know, what are you seeing with higher ed participation in agriculture, and specifically in ranching? And then two, I know you're paid to be optimistic about the prospects of the Institute's growth, but, you know, has that change in the socioeconomic landscape been such that it makes -- that you have seen a difference in participation in your program?

>> Yeah, I think those are two great questions, Tip. And to answer the first one, you're exactly -- we're seeing the same thing here in terms of maybe relative to trade, like an electrician, a carpenter, a mechanic, a plumber, an HVAC technician. You know, there's such a shortage of those trades people, the number of jobs that are out there for those type of folks are phenomenal, and they pay exceptionally well, compared to, you know, there's a lot of undergraduate degrees, especially that students, it seems like more so now than certainly when I went through college, but it seems like a lot of students finish their undergraduate degree, don't know what they want to do, maybe not prepared to go to work. So they just sign up and go to graduate school, just because they don't know where they want to go career-wise. So certainly, the cost of education, especially the higher education, just continues to rise. And so when you look at return on investment over a, you know, 10, 15, 20-year career, these students that choose to go to a trade school or learn a trade, get out, and are very successful and very well compensated, have a much greater return on their investment dollar for education, oftentimes than many of those that pursue a college education. And so I tell students, prospective students all the time, undergraduate prospective students, college is not for everybody, and so you need to have some idea, as best you can as an 18 or 19-year-old, you need to have some idea as to, you know, what you want to do, and if you need a college education to pursue that career, great, come get a college education. But it may be that there's -- you're wired to do some kind of a trade, work with your hands, work with your mind, and maybe you don't need a college education to be successful in a career and financially comfortable. And then the second part of your question, in terms of growth for the Institute, another unique feature of our program, the King Ranch family and some of their friends, when the program was instituted in 2003, had the vision that, you know, if we're going to ask these young people, most of the time, relatively young people, to leave a job, depart from the industry, and come back to a college campus for two years and pursue a graduate degree, we probably ought to compensate them such that they can focus on their education in the two short years that they're here. So we're fortunate that we have endowment support for a full ride. It's a combination scholarship fellowship, but our students are -- they're compensated well enough that they don't have to have employment, and they seldom, if ever, graduate with additional student loan debt. And so because of that, because of that funding that we have, we've been limited to a total of six graduate students at any one time. So we graduate three every spring, and we get three new ones every fall in a two-year, basically revolving door program. And so growing the program is doable, but to do so, we're going to have to raise additional support. And that's in the neighborhood of about $50,000 a year required to support each student. So we've got a formidable task before us. We're working on that. We'd like to, and we intend to grow the program slowly. The other part of that, look -- as we look to the future and think about growth, the jobs that we're preparing students for, there's not a lot of those out there. Now, we, as I just mentioned, we have -- we graduate three every spring, and in the 10 years that I've been here in the program, we've never had a student leave without a job offer. Now, we've had some students leave without a job, but every student that I recall has had a job offer by the time they graduated. But that said, as -- our mission is to prepare students or prepare people to manage larger complex ranches. And those jobs don't turn over that often as opposed to a cowboy job or a camp manager or a pen rider in a feed yard, something like that.

>> You're answering all my questions before I get there. I was going to ask about placement rates and the market value of the program. And I think you answered both of those questions. Yeah, let's go to your background. How did you end up -- so number one, that program is not as old as I was thinking. I think I was attaching it with some of the other stuff with Texas A&M, but how did you end up helping lead the King Ranch Institute?

>> Yeah, great question. So I did all my graduate work. I grew up, was born and raised in Central Texas. All three college degrees are from universities here. Went to Angelo State in West Texas for an undergraduate degree. Masters and PhD from Texas A&M and College Station. My grandfather had a small stock farm in Central Texas, and so I grew up going with him in the summer times on weekends. We would be there frequently. And that's where my love for animal agriculture and natural resource management really started. I went to college and knew that there wasn't a ranch or a farm -- family farm or ranch for me to go back and manage. And I had been exposed to, while I was in college, I'd been exposed to the extension service. And so, I thought, you know, that's a pretty neat job. You're as close to working with farmers and ranchers as you can be without having to own a resource. And I knew that I didn't want to be a county agent. I thought the specialist role was appealing. I knew that I needed a graduate degree. So I went to graduate school, got a masters, PhD with the intent of being an extension specialist. I finished the PhD in 1987, so I just dated myself. I'm an older, later career kind of guy, but finished in 1987. Yeah, that's true.

>> The thresholds are older.

>> And the state of Texas had, or the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service had an opening. I was particularly interested, but the state budget was such that everything was frozen, so there was no opportunity. I said, well, you know, I've got to get a job. I have a wife. I need a job. There was a research position, a cow-calf research position with the University of Florida that was open. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to apply for that. That'll force me to get my resume, my application together. Never dreamed that I'd get an interview. Got an interview, got a job offer, and didn't have anything else, so I accepted that offer. I moved my wife to South Florida, right in the middle of the peninsula, about 100 miles north of Lake Okeechobee, and was fortunate to spend a couple of years there in a cow-calf research position. And I say I was fortunate because that was a tropical environment that I'd never experienced. Average annual rainfall in that particular part of the state was about 70 inches. So I got to experience what ranching is like in that environment. After a couple of short years there, there was an opportunity to come back to Texas to an extension livestock specialist position in far west Texas, and that's what I had prepared myself to do. We had our daughter, our one-year-old daughter, in tow, so we came back to Texas. So I moved from South Florida, 70 inches average annual rainfall, to far west Texas, where average annual rainfall is 9 inches in the Chihuahuan Desert. And so as I look back, I was -- I am blessed that I have literally operated in both ends of the spectrum, from a desert environment to a tropical environment, and livestock production, especially beef cattle production, in both of those environments. So that prepared me exceptionally well. I did six years in far west Texas, then the Extension System moved me to a research center about 80 miles west of San Antonio, where we raised our kids. I spent about 26 years there at that research extension center. And then my good friend, who was the executive director at the time, Clay Mathis, of the King Ranch Institute, called and he said, "We've got a brand-new endowed chair position in ranch management here at the Institute. I'd love for you to take a look." And I said, "You know what, Clay, that's awesome. I'm comfortable here. I'm really not interested." And he called back a second time, gave him the same response, called back a third time, and said, hey, just at least come look at it. I said, okay, I'll do that. So I came and was really impressed. I'd known about the program. I'd been involved in some of the outreach education opportunities that they offered. But when I came and I sat at the table and visited with the students at that time, I thought, you know, this is a really unique opportunity. And I looked at it as the capstone to my academic career, if you will. Because most of my Extension career had been -- the clientele that I'd worked with were older. Many of those had made, you know, had had a career, made their fortunes elsewhere, and had come back to maybe a ranch or farm that their parents owned, or maybe they had bought a small property to live their dream. And so, a phenomenal clientele. But they weren't, you know, really profit-driven. And so, I came to the Institute with two opportunities in mind. Number one, the opportunity to work with young people who have their career in front of them instead of behind them. And they're excited about ranching. But then also, the King Ranch Institute has a phenomenal network of some of the largest, most complex ranches across the country, from the East Coast all the way to Hawaii. And so, that really intrigued me. So I was offered the Paul Genho Endowed Chair in Ranch Management. And came and said, okay, I view this as a five-year capstone to my career. And here I am 10 years into my association with the Institute, and it's been a phenomenal, phenomenal experience.

>> Yeah. Yeah, when you're doing satisfying work, it feels good to keep doing it.

>> It does. It really does.

>> I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I wanted to ask the question, why does ranch management matter? And I have a lot of thoughts about that, but to avoid predisposing or directing your answers, I just want to leave it open to any question. And then, one of the first things that comes to mind is succession planning. And anyway, I'd like to hear, you know, your -- somebody asked you cold on an elevator, doesn't know anything about ranching, and said, why does ranch management matter? What would be your answer?

>> Yeah, it's a great question. And we could spend several podcasts fleshing out the answer to that. But my elevator answer, especially for somebody that wasn't familiar with ranching at all, is that, you know, ranches are the watershed over which rainfall falls and goes downstream, either on the surface or into an aquifer, that we all, municipal dwellers and rural folks alike, depend on the water that is generated by those watersheds. And so, if we do a good job of managing those, we improve the quality of the water that's collected, and that impacts us all. The phenomenal part about ranch management is we're entrusted with, oftentimes, a very, very vast and very valuable natural resource. And it's up to the folks that are entrusted with that management to preserve that resource and hopefully improve that resource in terms of its stability, its productivity, and its service as the watershed that's going to generate and collect the water that we all depend on. And to your point, succession is more important than it's ever been. And it's really sad that the number of ranch families that don't do a good job of succession planning. And I experience those all the time working with a family right now, brother and sister, parents, they didn't do a good job of ranch planning. And it's rather than it being a pleasurable experience, it's a traumatic experience as that brother and sister try to sort things out and figure out, you know, how are we going to divide this? How are we going to divide it? Who gets mom and dad's house? You know, and so we, as an industry, as a whole, broad statement, we don't do a good job of succession planning. Now, that said, there are examples of families that have done phenomenal jobs of succession planning. But as a whole, at least my observation, we as an industry are not doing a good job of that succession planning.

>> Yeah, I'm increasingly concerned about the number of landowners of both cropland and ranch land and combinations of the two that used to just be called ranches, I guess, in the West, and maybe farms in the Midwest who are, you know, retiring or expiring with no real plans to ensure the lands are managed well. And, you know, you say we don't do a good job of succession planning. Many of them don't even do a bad job because there's no job done. It's just whatever happens, happens. You know, but often there's no heir who wants to take it on. And that's not a small thing, or has any knowledge whatsoever to think through land tenure and management options. And so this sets up a situation where the land is just, you know, a valuable albatross around their collective necks. And if you can get rid of the albatross and make a lot of money in the deal, you know, why not sell? I was just talking with a rancher a couple of months ago who does custom farming and runs cattle on about a dozen mid-sized land parcels, like a few thousand acres a piece. And all of the owners are in their mid-eighties, and not one of them has a succession plan. And I'm just conservation-minded enough that that concerns me, you know, both for the social effects that might be downstream for the family, but also for the future of that land. And I'm familiar enough with small family-owned businesses like this to know that sometimes their best option is to sell and sell to somebody ideally who can manage it well. You know, we've done, by we, I mean Washington State University and other university extension programs, have done a lot of stuff on succession planning over the years, which really do help people, but they don't reach enough people. So to come back around, I feel like your program can step into that situation a few ways. At a minimum, you've got more people who are able to take on those properties, potentially put some of them together and work for the owners, whoever they are, and make it more likely that the owners might see these land assets as something that has value other than liquidation. And of course, if the land is sold for anything except development, there's a need for competent people to run it. Yeah. How do you see the King Ranch Institute fitting into this environment, which I feel like is coming at us hot and heavy?

>> Yeah, no doubt. And certainly, speaking just for the environment here in Texas, one of the greatest concerns is a lot of the ranches that sell ranch land that sells, especially in the eastern half of the state, is being purchased for a purpose other than production agriculture. And it applies to some of the farms -- many of the farms as well. And that's disheartening as the population expands and development efforts ramp up. It's disheartening to see good productive ground, whether that's for cultivated crops or it's growing forage to produce an animal protein. It's disheartening to see that go out of production. But it's happening and it seems like an ever-increasing pace. I know here in Texas, the Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M College Station has tracked real estate prices. And their professionals tell me that it was probably the mid-1980s, and this is kind of a broad statement, probably the mid-1980s was the last time that you could buy ranch land and pay for it with the production therefrom, whether that -- including maybe a recreational revenue as well as livestock production, maybe some hay production or silage production. So we're 40 years past the point that you could buy a ranch, at least in Texas, you could buy a ranch and pay for it ranching. And so a lot of the ranches over the last 40 years that have been bought have been bought with money external to maybe agriculture. And they're bought by people that aren't professional ranchers. And so that's one of the places that our graduates oftentimes go. And many of our graduates are managing property that's owned by an absentee owner that's a very, very successful business person, but they don't really know anything about managing animal and natural resources. And so that's where graduates from our program, as well as many of these other ranch management programs really have an opportunity is to help these people that are very successful and financially stable, but that now own ranch land. It's helped them manage the resources that they have to meet the vision, mission, and goals that they've identified for the property that they own.

>> One concern is the succession planning. I think another is just trying to keep the ranches that are still running, profitable enough to keep running and to make them attractive to whoever might be the next generation that's going to take that over. I'm wondering, what do you think about -- in that vein, what do you think about some of the payment for ecosystem services systems and programs that provide compensation for, you know, ranches that are providing these, what really are public ecological goods, but don't receive compensation? That like the compensation is not figured into the price of cash.

>> Right. Yeah, I think it's phenomenal. There's a phenomenal opportunity for ranchers or managers of the resource, I should say, for them to be compensated for a good stewardship of those resources. As I said, about -- when we were talking about the elevator speech and why does ranch management matter, the better we manage those resources and the more sustainable those resources are, society as a whole benefits from that. Not only in terms of producing quality water, but their ability to come out and enjoy the natural resources. And I think often about the public land states where if it's well managed, it benefits not only maybe the livestock and wildlife managers that are directly related with it to the property, but it benefits the people that want to come out and be a part of nature and see the great outdoors. And so I think it's awesome that there is opportunity now for those that are good stewards to be paid to be compensated for that stewardship. That said, we're relatively young in that and I oftentimes am a bit nervous about can we in fact document the good that we're doing in terms of managing these resources. So I think the jury is a bit out yet, so to speak, as some of these ecosystem service contracts are being initiated. I think -- I look forward to the 5 and the 10 years down the road when we go back and we measure things like soil carbon, soil organic matter, and can document that we've made a difference. I'm going to be much more comfortable with those programs as well. And the same could be said about maybe a little bit different vein, but somewhat similar. The renewable energy opportunities, be it wind or solar, I think there's phenomenal opportunities there if that fits within the vision, mission, and goals of the family. Some families don't like maybe the distraction that wind energy provides and the aesthetics. So I'm not saying everybody ought to jump on those opportunities, but there are more opportunities outside of livestock and wildlife today for ranch resource owners to capture additional revenue than perhaps we've ever had before. And again, that's where I think professional ranch managers have the business savvy to help ownership sort through those, identify the right folks to talk to, do the right analysis in terms of return on investment. I think that's where professional management can be a tremendous asset to the resource owners that are considering these alternative revenue streams.

>> Yeah. Related to that, back to the question about why does ranch management matter, we talked about the elevator speech to somebody who doesn't know anything about ranching. And I think I would agree with your assessment of how to go at that. How would you answer that if it was a commercial cow-calf guy who is wondering about the program and maybe looking for a ranch manager, et cetera.? How would you answer the question to a rancher, why does ranch management matter?

>> I think my first thought there, Tip, is profit margins in the ranching industry seem to get -- seem to be -- they're narrower and narrower as we -- as time passes. Now, that said, we're in a period of time that everybody is well aware. We've got record high prices for cattle, all the way from weaned calves to the fed cattle that are coming out of the feed yards. And so maybe that's not a fair statement at this particular point in time. Profit margins ought to be as wide as they've been in maybe the last two or three decades, for those ranches that are doing a good job of managing unit cost of production. Unfortunately, even with record high prices, there are some operations that are maybe marginally profitable because for whatever reason they haven't done a good job of managing their unit cost of production. So I think number one, I think it takes professional management to help ranch owners identify what that unit cost of production is. And it's such a simple statement that people oftentimes dismiss it. But I oftentimes tell, and we coach our students and I tell producers, if you don't know what your unit cost of production is, then you don't know how good a price is that's being offered to you. And it sounds so simple, but just like the transfer of ranch property to the next generation, we're not doing a great job of that. One of the places that we fall short is really determining an accurate unit cost of production. Oftentimes, the resource may be eroding around us and if we don't look at our balance sheet, we may not know that. And so I think, again, professional management, especially on the business management aspect, is critically important in these days and as we look to the future, as profit margins are squeezed, the ability to operate, to evaluate all these alternative sources of revenue takes more than just the cowboy that just came up through the ranks. And that's historically how we produce ranch managers. Typically, a young man would start, maybe grew up on the ranch, was a cowboy, then moved up to a camp manager, unit manager, and then eventually progressed to be the general manager. And so, very, very, very talented in terms of managing maybe pastures, managing cattle, managing a horse program, maybe even managing people. But oftentimes, the business management of the ranch was left to the ranch accountant or maybe a family member that was distant to the ranch. And I think the days ahead are not going to be -- are not going to afford us the opportunity for these larger, more complex ranches that are truly profit-driven and economic sustainability is an important part. I think it's going to be critically important that those ranches have exposure to professional management.

>> Mm-hmm. You've been around this a while. If you were talking to an 18-year-old who clearly has ability and interest in ranching but was not born into it and isn't quite sure how to get into it, what would be your advice to them? And you can take off your institute hat to answer. And I think you mentioned in your email that you guys do internships. I don't know if that applies to people that are not part of the program, but yeah.

>> Yeah. So what I would tell them and what I tell them, and because I'm located here on a college campus and have significant exposure to undergraduates, I tell them if you're passionate about animal agriculture or agriculture in general, be that farming, ranching, whatever, if you're passionate about that and you think that's something that you want to pursue as a career, then get involved. Get a job. Go work in a feed yard. Go work for a farmer driving a tractor, driving a combine. Go find a ranch job. And agriculture enterprises are no different than anybody else. Everybody is looking for good help. And there's still no substitute for experience. And so I would tell that 18-year-old, go get a job in something related to agriculture and gain some experience because there's no substitute for that.

>> Yeah. And then once you step through a door and start going somewhere, the other options start to play out.

>> Yeah, exactly. And so our outreach education component that we have here, our lectureships in genetics and prescribed burning and wildlife, managing the wildlife business and a variety of topics, we make those available to undergraduates here or undergraduates anywhere. And then we'll even further -- undergraduates here at Texas A&M University Kingsville, we'll do like five scholarships and waive the registration for them if it's something that they want to pursue. And so, you know, get a job and then pursue education wherever you can do that, you know, through the local county extension office and the programs they offer. Maybe the land grant university in your state has a cattleman's short course or field day, but take every opportunity to not only get the hands-on experience, but to continue your education, whether you've been in the business six months or 60 years. I think continuing to educate ourselves is critically important because the business continues to change. I'm reminded of my good friend, Randy Blach, with CattleFax, made a comment several years ago. And his comment was, "The speed of change will never be as slow as it was today."

>> Yeah, that's a great quote.

>> You know, so the rate at which things are changing is just like that proverbial snowball coming downhill. It just changes at a more rapid pace all the time.

>> Well, for somebody who is interested in the King Ranch Institute program, what does the program look like?

>> Great question. Two-year program. Students arrive late summer. They'll do a fall semester, a spring semester, and then we send them on a summer internship. And the goal of the internship is to expose them to a different part of the country and a different part of the animal protein production industry than those that they're most familiar with.

>> So if they come from Wyoming, we're going to do our -- a Wyoming cow-calf operation, we're going to do our best to find an internship. Some other part of the country, maybe the southern or eastern U.S. and a different part of the beef industry, maybe a stocker operation, maybe a feed yard, maybe a seed stock operation. But again, just trying to diversify their experience and their exposure to the industry. Then they come back in the fall, do a fall, and then they graduate the second spring. And so they'll take 30 credit hours of coursework. But the real core of our program and our curriculum is what we call our service learning projects or case study projects. So these are projects that -- they're management decisions that come to us from cooperating ranches. And we don't create those academically, but the typical project comes to us. Somebody will call or they'll send an email and they'll say, hey, you know, the ranch next door is coming up for lease or maybe for sale. And we've not had -- we've not taken the time to really drill down on the numbers to see if that's really something we ought to consider. But we'd love for your students to consider that. And so they'll provide us their numbers. They'll provide us, you know, what's the lease look like or the potential purchase look like. They'll provide us their financials. And the students will spend from three weeks to three months working on that project and come back to them with a recommendation, complete with financial analysis if that's appropriate, and make a recommendation to that ranch as to how they ought to proceed. Now, sometimes those ranches will take that recommendation and run with it. We did a project several years ago that was a multi-year project, about six million dollars in cost. It was a brush management range reclamation project. And the ranch embarked on that. And that project has played out really, really well. Sometimes the recommendation comes back and it's like, based on the financials you gave us and the vision, mission, and goals that you have for your operation, it doesn't look like that's a wise choice to lease or buy that ranch that you pointed us to. And so, you know, oftentimes it's a starting point and we'll build a financial model to make -- to facilitate making decisions. And the ranch will then take that model and tweak it and, you know, refine the decision that they make. But the goal of those projects, and again, their management decisions, the goal of those is we hope to challenge our students while they're here with a project that's big enough and involved enough and deep enough that when they graduate and go from here, there's not many management decisions that will truly intimidate them. They've learned how to eat that elephant one bite at a time. And so, when they go wherever they may land from here and they're faced with those significant management decisions, we've helped them build a system to attack that and come up with a defendable answer to ownership. And so, yes, coursework is critically important. That's what earns them the master's degree, but it's those real-world projects. And they'll do from seven to as many as 10 of those in the short time that they're here. But those are really the foundation and the core of our graduate training.

>> Yeah, they don't have all the answers, but they're not afraid to start chewing.

>> Right.

>> Yeah.

>> Exactly.

>> I think on the website, you mentioned something about research. To what extent is the Institute -- what's the nature of the attachment or the integration with the Institute with the Texas A&M Kingsville research programs?

>> Yeah. So research is not a mainstream part of our program here. We're primarily focused on the graduate program and our outreach education. But what we do have the ability -- because we're very small, and the executive director, Dr. Robert Wells, is the second Paul Genho Endowed Chair holder. We've got two other chair holders that we have partial appointments with. Dr. Ben Turner in agribusiness and Dr. Fidel Hernandez, who is also with the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute. So he's a wildlife biologist. And so, that's the sum total of our faculty. But because we're very small, we can operate -- we're typically more nimble and can move quicker than maybe a larger university entity like a department or like extension or something like that. So we look for opportunities to address emerging issues. So we did a paper several years ago on water and what's the future for water look like from a ranching perspective. About three years ago, when the carbon -- the ecosystem services was really coming to the forefront, we did a whitepaper on, Should I Sell Carbon Credits? And it was aimed at just not trying to convince ranch owners to do it or not do it, just trying to inform them. We're working on a project right now that's related to the New World screwworm. Because here in South Texas and all of us that are along the Mexico border, whether you're in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or Southern California, we're on the front line of that battle. And so it's been 50 years since we've had to fight that battle. And so many of the folks that are managing ranches now never saw a case of screwworms, didn't have to deal with that. And so we're looking at -- we're working on a project to look at a systems approach, a systems thinking approach to the New World screwworm. In other words, what are all the ramifications and implications of when that screwworm fly gets here? Not only from a livestock perspective, but from a wildlife management perspective, what impact might it have on rural communities? What impact might it have on beef production? And so, that's the primary research role that we play is taking a systems look at emerging issues, producing a whitepaper that hopefully helps those in the ranching community and the affiliated entities, helps them gain a bigger perspective, broader perspective, big picture perspective, if you will, on that emerging issue. So we're not really involved in research like the typical, we're going to set up an experiment, have these different treatments, feed them and weigh them, analyze the data. We're not involved in that kind of research. Our research aspects are more related to, like I say, emerging, providing a perspective on emerging issues.

>> Mm-hmm. I did see that whitepaper on whether or not to get into selling carbon credits and that's on my reading list for the weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

>> Good, good, good.

>> Yeah, we should do an episode on the history of the King Ranch at some point and you could figure out who would be the right people to talk to. I think that would be interesting.

>> We can -- I can absolutely do that. I just worked with a writer that was writing for Progressive Cattle and she wanted to do a feature on the Institute and she too was interested in the history of the King Ranch. So I connected her with the right people at King Ranch and it winds up, it's going to be, I think, two or maybe three articles because when she got to digging into and learning about the history of King Ranch, she was just infatuated with that history and that's going to be, I think, a separate standalone article. So we can absolutely -- I can absolutely connect you to the right folks that can share the historical perspective and tell the fascinating story that is the King Ranch here in South Texas. So if you want to do that, I'd be happy to connect you.

>> Yeah, I think we should. I don't know that I have any more questions, but I usually forget to ask people. Is there anything else you wanted to say that I didn't ask about?

>> No, the only thing I would say, you know, we're always looking for great student. And so the application project is on our website. You can find us on the web. Just type in "King Ranch Institute" to your -- type that in your search engine and we should be the first website that shows up. The application process is well described there. We'll start -- we take applications anytime, but we typically will consider those start about January 15th. We'll notify the successful applicants by the middle of April so that they've got the summer to prepare. But if there's any of the listeners that are interested, we welcome the opportunity to visit. We'll hop on a phone call or a Zoom call with you, but we're always looking for young people. And then not necessarily have to be young. We had a gentleman come through the program that celebrated his 50th birthday while he was here in the program. So if coming back to school and adding to your toolbox in terms of professional ranch management skills, especially the business aspect and the people management aspect, if that's something that would facilitate their career, we'd be more than happy to visit with them. Like I say, visit with them, but via the phone, jump on a Zoom call. If they want to come visit us here in South Texas, we'd be glad to show them around as well, but we're always in that market. The other thing that we've done is we've always historically said you had to have three to five years beyond your undergraduate degree. We realized that we've missed some really, really good students that either went to another program right out of an undergraduate degree or maybe just went to the ranch and went to work. And so we're bending that, relaxing that requirement a bit. So this would pertain especially to, you know, young people that have grown up on a ranch. And so, they've got 18 years, 19 years of experience ranching. We're going to take a look at some of those folks. We're not a good fit for that person that you described earlier that maybe didn't grow up on a ranch, never had any experience. We're not a good fit for them. But for those young people that have grown up around ranching with a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, neighbor, whatever the case might be, we're willing to take -- we're going to take a serious look at them right out of an undergraduate degree. So if they've got that experience, they want to add to their toolbox, again, their management skills, we're willing to take a look at them. So again, anybody that's interested in the program, either from a graduate student perspective and getting a degree here, or if you want to learn more about our outreach education opportunities, or if you just want to visit about ranching, we're always just a phone call away and we welcome anybody that wants to call and chat about anything that we have to offer or can help with.

>> Wonderful. I'm impressed and it makes me want to apply, but I'm not the right candidate either.

[ Laughter ]

Okay. This is great. Well, I won't ask you about other ranching degree programs and with any luck, I'll get a call from TCU after this episode comes out.

>> Yeah. So there's -- I would just say I would plug them. You know, TCU is the oldest of the ranch management programs established in 1955. It's a shorter-term program. It's as short as two semesters. Colorado State has got a great program. Texas Tech has got a brand-new Master of Science in Ranch Management. There's any number of programs, the undergraduate program, the Dan Scott Ranch Management Program at Montana State is an undergraduate program that's largely patterned after our graduate program here. Rachel Frost does a great job of leading that program. So there's any number of programs out there that are available to folks. But again, you know, we differentiate ourselves from the standpoint of the experience that our students have when they come to us and they're uniquely qualified whenever they leave here. So yeah, I would encourage you, pursue some of those others because there's some other really good ranch management opportunities as far as educational experiences that are out there.

>> Good. That's a good list. All right. Well, Rick, thank you for your time. I am really glad to make this connection and I would feel good about recommending the King Ranch Institute. And --

>> Well, thank you.

>> -- yeah, I look forward to further interaction.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Tip, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to visit with you. And again, if you ever happen to be in South Texas, please come by and drop in and visit.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you for listening to the Art of Range podcast. Links to websites or documents mentioned in each episode are available at artofrange.com. And be sure to subscribe to the show through Apple Podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app so that each new episode will automatically show up in your podcast feed. Just search for "Art of Range." If you are not a social media addict, don't start now. If you are, please like or otherwise follow the Art of Range on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X, formerly Twitter. We value listener feedback. If you have questions or comments for us to address in a future episode or just want to let me know you're listening, send an email to show@artofrange.com. For more direct communication from me, sign up for a regular email from the podcast on the homepage at artofrange.com. This podcast is produced by CAHNRS Communications in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. The project is supported by the University of Arizona and funded by sponsors. If you're interested in being a sponsor, send an email to show@artofrange.com. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and does not imply Washington State University's endorsement.

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