AoR 150: Bildo Saravia & Lauren Svejcar - Artisanal Mezcal & Ranching in Mexico

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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on range lands 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 Bildo Saravia, a rancher from Mexico who gave a plenary talk this morning at the Society for Range Management's 2025 annual meeting in Spokane, Washington, and I had the pleasure of visiting with Bildo in person today. I've also got with us Lauren Svejcar. She's a post doc with the USDA Ag Research Service out of Burns, Oregon, and she was the one responsible for coordinating these plenary sessions and getting Bildo over here. Welcome.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Thanks.

>> Bildo Saravia: Well, it's an honor to be here. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, you know, and to everybody here in the Art of Range, thank you.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, we're thrilled to have you. Bildo, where do you ranch?

>> Bildo Saravia: So I'm in northeast Mexico. It is a state known as Durango. And in there, we ranch three properties. I live in one of them, which is next to the city capital. It's called Rancho Las Yucas. And then not so far, around 50 kilometer, 60 kilometer range, we work in Rancho el Ojo, that is better known as the Malpaís region. Malpaís transmits to very harsh, volcanic kind of soil. And then we have another property called Rosillo, pretty close by. It's part of the same, but that ranch, we use it for our development, for our heifers and so, yeah, I ranch in Durango.

>> Tip Hudson: And are you from there?

>> Bildo Saravia: I am from there. My mom is from there. My dad is from there. Apparently, my dad, you know, he got crazy with tracking his record, you know, of -- and eight generations he figured out, you know, that we've been in Durango.

>> Tip Hudson: I think before today, I couldn't have labeled any of the Mexican states on a map, although I knew the names of some of them. I'm guessing there's probably a lot of listeners who don't know either. I'm interested. What is the -- because I've never been there -- what is the country like? And I sort of like this Australian word for country, just because I think it has thicker meaning than some of our words like that are sterile, you know, plant community type --

>> Lauren Svejcar: Landscape.

>> Tip Hudson: Right? There's sort of a bigger picture than just what are the species there? But what is that -- what is that country like?

>> Bildo Saravia: Well, to me, it's beautiful, you know. And sometimes we work so much in it that we forget, but when I have people from the United States that go for the javelina hunt, you know, and they enjoy the landscape so much, and they say how unique it is. To me, it could be similar, you know, to parts of Texas or even New Mexico or Las Yucas, you know, even Wyoming, you know, but I guess we're all in that central grassland. And we have some species, you know, that we share. But we also have some endemic species, you know, that makes us very rich. We have Agave durangensis, commonly known as maguey cenizo. We have a Dasylirion cedrosanum that is commonly known as the desert spoon, or the sotol plants, you know, that makes us unique. The cactus, also, we have an endemic cactus that is Opuntia durangensis, and they can grow for 2, 3 meters, you know. So imagine a big tree and put spines to it and prickled pears and huge jucas [phonetic] mezquites, you know, and that's kind of the -- of the landscape.

>> Tip Hudson: We have some Opuntia polyacantha, but it doesn't get quite that big.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: So it's a mixed shrub land and grassland.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah. We also have this part that is called breña [phonetic], you know, and it looks flat, but till you are there, you realize how tough the terrain is, and it's like the bad landslide of the volcano. So like to one side, you know, we have the lots of rocks, but it's flat, and it's graceable, and it's manageable, but then you have this untamable land, you know, that is a lot of land we have, actually, on the property, almost a bit more than a 1/3, you know, 1,800 hectares of this brush breña kind of thing. And we didn't saw a use of it, you know, for grazing because it's too complicated. But when we started moving, you know, into an approach for conservation, I found, you know, that that land is destined just to be let alone, to be enjoyed, to be watched. So yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: What is the climate like?

>> Bildo Saravia: So, look, used to be colder. And we used to have a very cold frost from December to February. But the past three, four winters, you know, it's been pretty much above average. So it goes to 2, 3 Celsius. It doesn't -- it's hard to get minus, you know? Before we used to have minus temperatures, you know, during the winter time. We have a rain season that every time gets shorter and shorter. Good years, you know, it's late June till all the way late September, early October, but the more -- and we see it, you know, it gets shorter. And when it comes, it's more strong. So that's been a challenge, you know, that we all face. I'm not in the agriculture sector, you know, especially so I'm more of a rancher, pure rancher. But I see, you know, a lot of the people that do agriculture stressing even more than us. The temporal in Durango is the way, you know, most people farm, so we don't have a lot of technology in irrigation. Maybe this is due to the land ownership in Durango. So 80% of the land through the state is ejido, and 20% of the land is private ownership, as we are. So that makes more complex, you know, to get certain things happening. Different, for example, than Sonora or Chihuahua where is the opposite, where you have a 20% ejido composition and 80% private ownership. So it has a different approach, you know, to how we manage the land.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, that sounds not so dissimilar from various parts of the United States.

>> Bildo Saravia: I guess. You know, that's the -- some things don't have borders, you know, and this is one of those things that we're in the same -- the same opportunity or the same reality to fail together. You know, either we succeed together, or either we fail together. You know, there's no other way, as I see it, you know, when we talk to climate.

>> Tip Hudson: And what is the family's history in ranching?

>> Bildo Saravia: So, yeah, that's a fun story, you know, because Mexico has gone, you know, through us, the United States and everybody, Mexico, you know, we had this thing the revolution. So we are a mixture breed. You know, every Mexican has a part Indigenous in him, even we don't -- we don't realize it, but the truth is, you know, that we are that mestizaje. You know, we took what there was and all that rich culture, you know, that Europe didn't even imagine, you know, and suddenly, you know, they had these clean cities and all this amazing -- and then that changed, you know? And I'm not judging it, you know? Life is what it is, and I'm part of that, you know, a mestizaje, you know, that -- so we took the best, you know, of both worlds. And now, yeah, so I was kind of going, so I don't know -- maybe Lauren should --

>> Tip Hudson: So now you raise brangus?

>> Bildo Saravia: I raise brangus. You know, I started at 16. My father ventured into commerce. My grandfather, I know, when I was -- my grandfather was also into commerce, but during those times of hardship on the revolution, he saw his father pretty much lose everything, you know, from being ranchers and landowners to be displaced, you know, and in the turbulence of those political moments, but they never cease, you know, to love and appreciate, you know, what we were. And so my grandfather was naturally driven to be afraid of any rural business, you know, any business that had to do with agriculture or anything.

>> Tip Hudson: Wow.

>> Bildo Saravia: He was like, no, he was very successful at commerce. My father follow up the business that he started, and I got that amazing support from my dad, you know, to start ranching from very young and now is his main business. You know, he started leaving other businesses to fully dedicate every time and more to what we do together. So it's me and my dad that we're working together.

>> Tip Hudson: I love that.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: I want to come back to that in a minute. Lauren, how did you get connected with Bildo to offer an invitation to come speak at the SRM?

>> Lauren Svejcar: So Bildo and I are part of a lot of different groups. Bildo is very active, and so he's a part of the Central Grasslands Roadmap, the Rio Grande Joint Venture, and a lot of these larger scale efforts that connect across borders. And so I'm very heavily tied with the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, doing a lot of work to promote the voices of our pastoral people. And that includes ranchers, shepherds, goat herders, you name it. And so Bildo was a part of one of these groups that had come on, and so we got tied together with some of these joint efforts, and then have just carried that forward because we shared a vision together of like a direction we all want to go, and that's promoting rangelands and the people who live in rangelands to a public that don't know or understand the world that we live in or appreciate it as much as they, well, we feel they ought to.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, that's a good goal. Would you call yourself a rancher? Because I'm aware that that the term ranch, I think, has its origins in Mexico, and I think it was the term that was used for these land grants given by the, you know, when after Spain took over, they gave these land grants to people that were sort of faithful to the crown of Spain. Do you know? Is that where that word came from?

>> Bildo Saravia: Well, I don't know that. We call them ranchos, you know?

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: But that perception, to me, was more like on the hacienda, you know, when we have the times of the hacienda, but if you think, you know, it was our industry, you know, the hacienda, you know, back in the time of the Spanish, you know, that they were the production areas. You know, if it was with pulque, if it was with textiles, you know, everything came from agave back in those times, and I think I feel proud, you know, of what we are and what we were. You know, I have no shame. You know, the things that some people may judge them today, but at the end of the day, history is what it is, you know, and changes comes because sometimes they just need to manifest, and just time will tell, you know, if they were for good or for bad. What I do know is that today we feel proud, you know, for ranchos, of the communities that make them. We see that there is really no difference, you know, because we can come from positions, you know, of economic privilege, where we are capable, you know, of sustaining, but the effort is the same because instead of just maybe not -- the families depend on us. So the more successful they are, we are, the most at risk we are also. You know, and then you have all these other complexities, you know, success drives, you know, to certain security risks, you know? So how do you balance, you know, like wanting to show success, wanting to do the good without the fear, you know, of somebody taking it the wrong way or seeing it as an opportunity? So I guess what I'll say is that I like to move everywhere in Durango alone, you know? It's a big state. I have projects in the mountains, in the High Sierras. I purchase cattle, you know, around the state. And the one thing that always makes me feel secure is that I trust love, you know, and doing things with a great heart, you know? And when you build relationships, you know, around who you are and what you do, the same people will always take care to each other, you know? So the ejido, I think, is like the word, you know, that came after this communal land ownership, and that is a big challenge. And I think that the challenge is not finishing the hill, you know? Some people say, oh, you know, it's the end of the hill time because we have the -- all the ejidatarios, you know, and then the age of corporations, you know, and all this. But I think there is young people that are seeing our work and they're ranchers also. You know, they may have a ownership of the land as ejidatarios, but they are ranchers, you know? And they see, you know, their livehood based on cattle production and the management of the resources. So I don't know. I think, you know, we can debate that with the historians, you know, and decide, you know, good or bad but to my personal opinion and, you know, I'm just guess I'm a proud Mexican, you know, of who we are, you know, of heritage, but I also like America, you know? And I have no problem, you know, accepting, you know, that there is so much good that we could take, and there should be no division, you know? There should be nothing of races or flags or beliefs because at the end of the day, we're in a continent together, you know, and we're sharing so much economy, values, tradition. If you see how much Hispanic influence now America has, well, it's huge, you know, same as it has Indigenous from the Navajo. It depends, you know? The America is huge. So you go to different parts of it, and you find different things. But at the end of the day, if I take something, you know, as the best of America is its people, you know, and the most, like Lauren, you know, I've met very committed people, you know, to causes that are way bigger than them. And they know they're small, you know, but they have all this energy to keep putting the best, you know? So I can be assured that if we want to construct a better planet, it has to be with America, you know, and with their minds and with their consciousness and with their capacities. So at the end of the day, it's the biggest consumer on the planet.

>> Tip Hudson: You spent some time in Australia?

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: That seems to be a somewhat common life path for young aspiring ranchers.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: How did you end up in Australia? What was that experience? And then what brought you back to Mexico?

>> Bildo Saravia: You know what is funny that it had nothing to do with ranching. I was actually running from the ranching, you know, and I was young. You know, I had the opportunity to let -- be rebel, you know, and disagree with my dad, you know, and still with that, you know, receive his support. So in 2023, I took this thing, you know, that I wanted to migrate to Australia, you know? And I wanted to do my life over there. And I was not thinking, you know, in returning. So when I went, I opened a bar called Mr. Mustache, bistro and cantina.

>> Tip Hudson: I like it.

>> Bildo Saravia: And it's in that, you know, connection, you know, that you never lose who you are because at the end of the day, I may have been going away, you know, for the things that I didn't approved or liked in Mexico, and I went to a place, you know, that I felt good, that I felt that I could be, you know, what I desired. But at the end of the day, we always take with us who we are. So that connection, you know, with the mezcal world, it was my way of not losing, you know, that Mexicanity. So it is in that path that I met the Cortés that is today my business partners with Origen Raíz mezcal. So I could say, you know, that I really got to know my culture and the real pureness, you know, of all those values when I was away from it, you know, when I was the most far that I could ever be. So that was from 2012 to 2015. Then the universe, you know, decided, you know, that it was okay that I could try to reach my own dreams and accomplish them, but that it was time, you know, for me to go back and take the responsibilities, you know, at the end of the day, we inherit. Because we inherit all the good but also, all the -- all the -- I don't want to say it because it's not bad at all, but sometimes it can feel like a burden, you know? It can be overwhelming, you know, to have a big challenge, you know, and suddenly realize that you're an adult, you know, and that it's your turn to do what it was done for you. You know, I think we all are faced, you know, at different stages of our lifetime through similar things, you know?

>> Tip Hudson: That was a brilliant segue, a transition to talking about mezcal because that was my next question. I had maybe heard that word before, and I like a good Margarita, but I think if somebody had asked me a week ago to define the word mezcal with no other context, I would have said it was a tropical bird or something.

>> Lauren Svejcar: You are so behind the times, Tip.

>> Tip Hudson: I hear it's all the rage now, but, yeah, I'm evidently -- I'm behind. So, one, what is mezcal, and, two, how is it different from tequila? Because they're both made from agave?

>> Bildo Saravia: Okay, so actually a tequila is a mezcal.

>> Tip Hudson: Okay.

>> Bildo Saravia: So mezcal comes from an Indigenous world, Nahuatl world, from the center regions of Mexico. And it's mexcalli. And mexcalli to the Nahuatl, it means cooked agave. So if we see the history, you know, for Hispanic tribes, communities, there is a lot of connection, you know, with the agave plant. From the spines that they used to tejer, to knit, you know, to do their --

>> Lauren Svejcar: Their sewing?

>> Bildo Saravia: -- their sewing, the fabrics they did. Food, they finally cook it, you know? And there is some history, you know, as a ceremonial in very special occasions, they will distill it. So it was deviated. You know, if it was when the Spanish came, you know, with the copper and these things, but now, for sure, we know, you know, that it goes way behind. So tequila is made out of agave, out of the blue agave. They did an origin denomination. They decided that only blue agave, tequilana Weber is the plant, you know, in order to make that spirit, and it just became very industrial. And in order to make something, you know, compete with vodka that you make out of the wastage of potato to a plant that takes seven, eight years to grow. It's a complicated industry, you know? So I would say that mezcal is the artisanal part of it, you know? But I will be lying to you because now there's so many mezcales, you know, that can use that word and that don't reflect, you know what mezcal is to us. To us, mezcal is respect. To us, mezcal is sharing. It's nature itself, you know, because it comes from the earth. And every time we have a mezcal for the first time in the day, and we say this way that it means gratitude for this moment, and these people sharing this mezcal together. We give a little drop to the land because we acknowledge, you know, that we are the land, and we come from the land. So it's very romantic.

>> Lauren Svejcar: So romantic.

>> Tip Hudson: And I love it.

>> Lauren Svejcar: And there's a lot of species, right?

>> Bildo Saravia: Oh, yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: I mean, there's so many species of agave throughout Mexico and into the US that.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah, Lauren. And as Laura said, if we talk about diversity, sometimes we say, oh yeah, the wines, you know, are diverse. You know, I have merlot, pinot noir, many varietals, you know? But if you go in the world of agave, there's nothing, you know? We have so much diversity. We can use 70 species of agaves to make mezcal.

>> Tip Hudson: Wow.

>> Bildo Saravia: And then these species have subvarietals that go from altitudes, you know, that is the same gene of the plant, but one is growing at certain altitude, and the other one, and you look at them, and they're totally different. So it puts the genetist of the plants, you know, it makes them have a lot of fun. And then the sad part of this richness is that it's been lost. And it's been lost because now mezcal just became mezcal.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, you mentioned in your talk that in Oaxaca, the demand for this has resulted in farmers growing agave, as I understand it, in monocultures --

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: -- instead of maybe in polyculture as part of a, you know, a fully diverse landscape. Am I describing those two things accurately?

>> Bildo Saravia: You're right, you know? And I'm not saying that agave hasn't been farmed. You know, agave has been farmed for many generations, you know, since before the Spanish, but the Indigenous, they had a traditional method of farming, you know, that is called milpa, so it's not a monocultive, you know, because in that part of land, you know, they had pumpkin. They had corn, you know, bean and agaves. And agaves helped, actually, you know, because they retain water. So that mixture, you know, of plants, they were very smart on how to use it, but that traditional knowledge has been lost, you know, because now it's not the farmers farming the agave. Now it's the corporations leasing the land in order to put glyphosate first. You know, they put a big tractor. Then they put gimmicks that will kill every weed that is trying to grow. They will put rolls and rolls of espadín. That is the agave that has been used as the tequilana Weber. That's an specific angustifolia. And same as tequilana Weber, it's a very fast yield in agave. So it's the fastest-growing agave that will give you the most sugar. But they put now agrochemics, you know, into it, and so that is the risk. You know, that is the risk of the artisanal producer of being displaced, you know, because before he had a value, you know, for his product. Before it was fancy in all the planet, it was fancy in their communities because it's always been part of their -- of their livehood. And people bought it for their jolgorios, as they call it. But suddenly these cheap mezcals start showing, and in order to make a cheap product, you got to do something different, you know, and that is where the spoiling starts to come, you know, where we are making a product that is not 100% agave, just with the interest of supply and demand, you know, and the purchasers is okay with it, you know, because at the end of the day, he wants a $40 product instead of a $90. So all that starts driving a pattern, you know, of bad practices that we don't even realize that are happening till it's too late. So we saw it being too late in Oaxaca. You know, Oaxaca now is -- has faced how can you return a bush to its original state?

>> Tip Hudson: So they're having soil erosion in the places where they're --

>> Bildo Saravia: Of course because imagine they use the glyphosates. They don't want weeds growing.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: But then they plow the land. How much deep do you like that they do it?

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: You know, it's crazy.

>> Lauren Svejcar: And the roads to get equipment through and everything else. Agave are big, and so you only take the heart of the agave for production of mezcal.

>> Bildo Saravia: And you have seven years of growth. So in these seven years, the soil is exposed.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Wow.

>> Bildo Saravia: And the wind is happening all the time. And if you think of agave plantations, they're only in hillsides.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah. You likened it to the Dust Bowl. And I just wanted to ask about that because that was pretty extreme. It also seemed maybe especially appropriate because even the Dust Bowl was a crazy combination of political, economic, cultural, and ecological factors that you had a perfect storm. I don't know if that's an American figure of speech, but it wasn't as simple as just bad farming. It was the industrialization era and fertilization and having to borrow money to pay for all of that, and then not being able to pay it back and buy tractors and seed and then -- and then you add bad farming on top of that. What I think was interesting, I recently read the book by Tim Egan, The Worst Hard Time about the Dust Bowl, and he said that many of the ranch hands that had spent their lives in that part of the country, in the Southern Great Plains, told the farmers, if you plow the grass under, the earth is going to come apart because sometimes it just doesn't rain for a few years. And it's not going to go and of course, that's what happened. The dirt came apart and turned on the farmers, and it was unbelievably devastating. And it sounded like, yeah, you're describing similar conditions where there's this sort of short-term motive where you end up losing all of the ground cover and significant erosion. So my other question is what does it look like to grow agave where you're doing it?

>> Bildo Saravia: It grows wild, you know? So that's another of the beauties, you know? There is no human intervention. In the other two properties that we have, we have reforestation programs because we don't have the business, you know, the agaves we have in the other ones. And why not? You know, if in 15 years those agave will be ready, I want my daughters, you know, to endeavor on opening a new vinata, you know, and another ranch, but it just grows like truffles, you know? So it grows wild, you know, in different spaces.

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: Some areas are more vast than the other ones.

>> Lauren Svejcar: How many species do you use for yours?

>> Bildo Saravia: So in el Ojo, we have three species, but we only use the cenizo. So we have salmiana that we call maguey verde, but that agave is -- it likes just certain spots of the ranch, you know? So we just have a couple of families that we've been there. So we have led -- and we even put, you know, like wire, electric wire. So when they're getting the quiote, the cows don't go near. So now we have collected seeds, you know? So we are in the process, you know, of reintroducing species so we can use it in the future, you know? So again, you know, maybe my daughters, you know, when they're 21, they'll be celebrating they're doing this new label, you know, because I started planting those agaves now.

>> Lauren Svejcar: And just a note to the listeners, a quiote is the flower of the -- of the agave species, and they're very delicious and highly palatable, so cows tend to really like them a lot.

>> Bildo Saravia: And the deer.

>> Lauren Svejcar: And the deer.

>> Tip Hudson: Oh, right.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Like the fresh shoot, yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah, the little -- the flowers that come off.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: So that's what we call capon. So that's a thing that makes us unique, you know, because we have an agave that takes from 12 to 18 years to reach maturity. So that's 18 years on the waiting, you know? And then, yeah, so it's magical, you know, because at the end of the day, if you don't see what you do, you know, with caring, love, and respect for itself, for you for doing it, you know, it's -- so I think these things, you know, the mezcal is one of those other things that come in life that the more people want to throw themselves into it because of money, it's just more damage, you know, that we're going to do. You need to throw yourself for love, for caring, you know, for compassion, you know, in order to do great things.

>> Tip Hudson: Evidently, I'm quite a ways behind the times, but I don't think we've talked about how mezcal is made. What does the production process look like? Because I feel like I'm hearing a couple terms that you've used, and I must have missed it somewhere, but, yeah, I don't know what that looks like.

>> Bildo Saravia: So think of moonshine, you know?

>> Tip Hudson: I did grow up in the Ozark so. Yeah, so moonshine had its heyday.

>> Bildo Saravia: So, look, we use a hole in the ground. We call it a volcanic oven. You know, it's like hole, and then we put wood. All the wood we use for our mezcal is trees on the property that have died naturally. The big ones that we need to buy for the horno, we buy the ones that been -- that are not good for the timber industry, you know, like wastage logs. And then so the agave gets harvest by two, three people. So those are three jobs, you know, that we didn't provide before. And now because of this, there is the security. And they are the jimadores, leñadores, the helpers, you know, in the -- in making sure that the agave is collected from the -- from the wilderness, from the land. They cover the horno, and then for three days, the agave remains buried. So we covered from 6 to 7 tons of agave. Day 3, day 4, we take the dirt out of it. We make like a little mountain, you know, and the agave is cooked. When the agave is cooked, it activates all its sugars.

>> Tip Hudson: Sounds like a giant Dutch oven cooker.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah, yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Where you got the coals, put the food on top.

>> Bildo Saravia: Oh, yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Cover it with dirt, hold the heat in.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yup.

>> Tip Hudson: What are the arms of the -- these are funny plants. They're not leaves. They're not stems. What are the branches of the agave plant called?

>> Lauren Svejcar: Oh, that's a great question.

>> Bildo Saravia: Pencas.

>> Tip Hudson: That's the stuff you chop off to get to the heart of the agave?

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah, you get the leaves are the pencas.

>> Tip Hudson: Okay.

>> Bildo Saravia: There are no leaves, of course.

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: And then you have like this beautiful, you know, like heart.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: Agaves are different, you know? Some are taller. Some are perfectly round.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: Some are like more or less like a heart.

>> Tip Hudson: It is a beautiful plant.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: What were you going to say, Lauren?

>> Lauren Svejcar: Oh no, I just thought it was -- we had a conversation about this one time with some friends that were botanists and taxonomists, and it was a whole thing that they got into. It just made me giggle a little bit.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, I couldn't figure out what to call them.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: I'll say chop those things off the outside, but they've got to have a better name than things.

>> Bildo Saravia: It takes roughly, you know, between 21 days to 28 days to finish a batch. So we cover 7 tons of the agave, and then when we uncover it, and it's cooked, we grind it, and we use a traditional method that we use a mule.

>> Tip Hudson: How much would a single heart weigh?

>> Bildo Saravia: Average of 60 kilos.

>> Tip Hudson: Okay.

>> Bildo Saravia: But because we have some that are very tiny, but we have other ones that can weight 300, 500 kilograms.

>> Tip Hudson: Wow.

>> Bildo Saravia: But the average, I will say, is between 60 to 80 kilos. Then when we get the cooked agave, Anita, that it's a mule that we use, and it's -- we like to say that the American there does the hard work because Anita came from Arkansas. We got a mammal donkey that we bought a couple years ago because we use mules in the ranch.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: You know, the terrain is too tough with the horses, so we work with these magnificent, huge mules. But we got Anita there, you know, and she's happy. She works two, three hours a day. She munch all the sugar, you know, from the agave, so she's very happy, you know, to do her work. But as she goes rounds and rounds, you know, with a huge rock, a huge circle that we call tahona. So the agave gets put in there. And that process for us is very important. You know, some other mezcales do it mechanically with a sweater or -- but to us, you know, that that rock --

>> Lauren Svejcar: The traditional.

>> Bildo Saravia: The traditional way it makes like a better paste, you know? And then when we ferment is where it comes, you know, that tradition because the more even we have, you know, this mush of the fermentation, the bacteria and the microbes will better eat the sugars, and what they'll digest is alcohol, you know? So on that fermentation, it goes from three to five days, if we have very hot temperature. So in May, April, but then in winter, it can go up to 20 days. So when the cold comes, the fermentation, this accelerates. So we got to be very careful in there because it's where acidity builds. So the master is, you know, it's on the fermentation. It's a lot of trick to do it right.

>> Tip Hudson: You mean if it ferments too long, you get acidity?

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: And then it gives you [inaudible], you know, and you have unbalanced mezcal. And then we distill it.

>> Tip Hudson: That sounds bad.

>> Bildo Saravia: So on the distillation, it goes two times in a copper stills. The first time, everything, the bagazo, the fibers, everything goes into the distillery. So yeah, on the second distillation, it's just the clear liquid.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, so what happens after the fermentation is finished and the distillation?

>> Bildo Saravia: So on the tequila industry, they cook it with a gas chamber. Instead of three days cooking the agave, they do it in two, three hours, and then they press the agave to extract just the juice. They don't use the fibers. And they put it in huge tanks to ferment with different sugars. So we call them accelerators. So when you see 100% agave, no. Probably these are using corn syrup, you know, to accelerate it. And then the distillation is just one big distillation. You know, it just go massive. So I would say that the difference between mezcal and tequila is the process. You know, one is very rural, traditional, artisanal, simple, and the other one is industrial, big, you know?

>> Tip Hudson: I want to say I read like in The Wall Street Journal a while back that there was some major conflict between some of the different families that control the agave plantations. Am I recalling that accurately? Or you could tell me, but then you have to kill me.

>> Bildo Saravia: No, it's -- I think the tequila industry, they created, you know, these phases of supply and demand that they have these high peaks. You know, like every couple of years, the agave prices go to skyrocket, you know, and then they plummet. And this is because they overproduce, you know? And agave is a plant that in -- if you don't use it, the moment it's ready, like any vegetable, you know, once it's ready, and you got to take it. So if you don't have the production capacity, and you have more raw material what you can produce, it gives those cycles, you know? So that's another thing that distinguishes. We don't buy agave. So all the agave that we use to make our mezcales, it's belongs to our land. We manage it, you know, under holistic process, and that saves us, you know, from having the hassle of this argument, you know, with who is providing you the raw material. Because in those corporations, you know, they want to buy cheap and sell expensive, you know? So they ended up always fighting, you know, with the farmer for price. So I guess it has to do -- you know, but Mexico everything is kind of controlled, you know? And, I mean, you go to Washington, and it can be kind of the same, no?

>> Tip Hudson: Right, it's just institutionalized instead of local control.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: In case I forget about it, is your mezcal sold under a single label name?

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah. So the brand is called Origen Raíz del Espíritu, and we have five labels or five [inaudible].

>> Tip Hudson: Okay.

>> Bildo Saravia: So at the el Ojo, we make three. We make the sotol, the cenizo, and one we call pecho. And that's practically a cenizo, but it's a ceremonial mezcal that we make it as a tradition. The last batch of for a year, we have to make a party at the rancho. People have to be there. So when the distillation is happening, we have to share it. And in the second distillation, we offer a white tailed deer. So the meat of the deer gets hanged on the copper still, and then some fruits of the season get put, you know, into the mixture, and that is a ceremonial mezcal. You know, it has a value.

>> Tip Hudson: And that's all done on the ranch property?

>> Bildo Saravia: That's all in Rancho el Ojo.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: And then because we have partners, as I told you, from Oaxaca. They have their palenque in Oaxaca. They don't call them vinatas. They call them palenques, but it's the same thing. And in there, they make the Oaxaca mezcales. They make maracuyás [phonetic], arroqueño [phonetic], and then in 2018 we started working with the Angulo Ríos family. They're based in Topia, Durango. That is in the Quebradas region, you know, like close to Sinaloa and Chihuahua, sorry, and it's very magical, you know, because in that town, they have a history, you know, of remembering when the first poppy plantations came. You know, they're poppy towns. There used to be. And they remember, you know, like back in the 30s, this person, this family, you know, started in that. They remember when the marijuana plants arrived, but they don't remember when the agave was established. There is not a track, you know? So to me, that tells me, you know, that it's in their culture many times, right?

>> Tip Hudson: Further back, right.

>> Bildo Saravia: They remember when they were fermenting in the -- in the cow skins, you know, because there is this ancestral methods of making mezcal with clay and with cow skins. So that's pretty exciting. And when we met Carlos, you know, he had built his vinata the same time that we built our vinata at the ranch, me with my father, you know, my father saying you're crazy, you know, like. And Carlos with his father, and his father said who is going to work it, you know? You said you're going to work it, you do it, you know? Support you, but I'm old, you know? So 2015 Carlos venture into that 16, and then he was saying himself with his oldest daughter going to university and all this expenses and not being able to really sell his mezcal. So when we meet in 2018, we just became a vehicle, you know, because we don't purchase his agave. He's part of the family, you know? So is this company started by the Cortes and the Saravia, but suddenly it grew where the Angulo, you know, are an essential part now of it. And that's how we see our growth, you know, communally growing, you know? Because I already got to my size at the ranch. I already have a property that is the size that it is. You know, I already have 10 years of working the agave usage, so I know my size.

>> Lauren Svejcar: And it's about just maximizing the area that you have, right? You're looking at a whole lot of different products that can be -- that can come from the land that you have without overstepping. And so you've got this really amazing balance between cattle production, mezcal production, in this long-term plan of how do you effectively, efficiently account for different products coming out in a really nice way of balancing the assets that you have without overstepping.

>> Tip Hudson: Right, if the only -- if the only economic outputs from a ranch are pounds of beef on cattle, it may not be sufficient to hold the thing together. Yeah, we had -- did a sort of a ranch financial resiliency series a little while ago, and I remember I'm not a financial guy, but Clay Warden said one time you've got to layer other values on top of your dirt.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yep.

>> Tip Hudson: This is just a beautiful example of having a naturally-occurring plant that's part of the ranch that also has other economic values and as part of this polyculture that holds the dirt together.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah, and maintaining the species there as well. So you're not overstepping, as Bildo said. He's planting agave species out in there as not a monoculture, but as this nice matrix and this diverse system that gets harvested periodically through time, but never all in total.

>> Tip Hudson: We could talk for hours, but we're probably going to have to find some ways to wrap it up, but I do want to ask about -- you call it open tierra [phonetic] --

>> Bildo Saravia: Open soil regenerator.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah. What is that?

>> Bildo Saravia: A bomb of life for the soil.

>> Tip Hudson: A bomb?

>> Bildo Saravia: Of life.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah. That's a great phrase.

>> Bildo Saravia: So it's one of those things, you know, that you're -- I never saw myself doing that, you know, inventing that or even doing the mezcal, you know? After Australia, I had to reinvent myself, you know, and do new things. And is when we started, you know, playing with -- flirting with the idea, you know, of making something really big with the cactus. And somebody had this idea of making biogas. And I started a little bit, you know, and it didn't seem reasonable to me, you know, the amount of infrastructure needed, you know, and to compete with natural gas, you know, it just didn't make sense, even though we can make biogas out of it. But I saw a better opportunity in the wastage, you know, of trying to make that biogas that is just the biomass turned into a lixiviado, you know, a soup. And in that path, you know, we started confronting, you know, the challenges of people were leaving you, you know, because like what? You know, now you're making fertilizer, you know? This is like, come on. But eventually, you know, you knock enough doors, and some of them get open, you know? So when we started, you know, trialing the product in the land and with farmers, they were happy. So success after success, you know, we say, okay, we have something here. We perfected the product. To obtain a patent, we had to have some claim, you know, that there was a process that we invented which we did, and it has to do with the diet of an animal that we put in. And it has to do, again, with cactus. If you think of cactus, it's the only plant that it's a fruit and a vegetable. It will give us -- the barrel is a vegetable, and it will give us a prickle pear. So all that element --

>> Tip Hudson: So this is the Opuntia?

>> Bildo Saravia: Uh-huh, Opuntia.

>> Tip Hudson: Opuntia.

>> Bildo Saravia: So that's what Opunterra, you know, from Opunterra.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: From Opuntia and terra from the earth.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: And 220,000 live organisms we have in that border. We have mixture of PGPBs that are promoting growth bacteria. We have microbes that are all good, you know? We are free of pathogens, you know, coliforms, you know, all those things that we don't want. We don't have them because we don't use -- we don't -- we don't use -- we don't use the dung.

>> Speaker 1: Oh okay.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Manure.

>> Bildo Saravia: We don't use manure, you know, so we're free, you know, of all those that sometimes can come, you know, when you use them. So it's a very clean product that now we manage to manage how to make it. You know, that was the trick. You know, like, are we consistent? Because we can get a bottle, you know? So that's been, you know, trial and error, trial and error.

>> Tip Hudson: Did I hear that digestion by a cow is part of the production process?

>> Bildo Saravia: So if you think of a cow stomach.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: It's intelligent, you know? It's been evolving for millions of years to degrade stuff and turn it into nutrient. So it's smart. So there is our technology. You know, there is a bunch of enzymes. There is things that we don't even know what their names, probably millions of them. You know, I wouldn't know which one is. But what I do know if it's -- if the cow is given a good stool, it has a good rumen. It's a good functioning cow.

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: You know, it's perfectly balanced, you know? So there is harmony in that.

>> Tip Hudson: The animal science guys would say that in a single cc or a single milliliter of rumen fluid, there's over a billion individual organisms.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Oh, really?

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Wow.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: So eat lots of different species and types and sizes, and there's a whole food chain with the microbes.

>> Bildo Saravia: So yeah, so that combination, you know, of microbes, bacteria, fungi, and archaeas that actually provide the base of life. And if we have a gut in our stomach that is micro poor, we're going to keep having the sickness. But if we have a strong gut that is diverse, you know, in what we eat --

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: -- and what -- we'll be stronger, you know? So I see the soil as the gut of the --

>> Lauren Svejcar: Of the earth.

>> Bildo Saravia: -- of the plant, of everything, you know? We feed from the soil.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, and humans, they now call our second brain. The gut is the second brain.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Because there's so many connections with our nervous system.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah, I mean, we have this saying I got a gut feeling, you know?

>> Tip Hudson: Right.

>> Bildo Saravia: So, I guess, you know, like the soil is that, you know, but the soil is there for everybody. And if we have heard something is the soil, you know, because we just step on it, and we don't realize that we're -- that we're walking on our home, you know? So we got to work with more care. We got to be mindful, you know, of the impact that just walking may have. You know, some people that -- and I include myself, you know, sometimes we're just very busy, and we don't even know where we're going, you know, and we're just trying to rush, you know, and push somebody, you know, because we're trying, and then suddenly we need to make a stop and say, hey, you know, is this the way I want to treat my relationships? Is this the way I want my -- the future, you know, my daughters, to believe, you know, that things are done? No. So sometimes we got to force ourselves, you know, to stop.

>> Tip Hudson: So are you applying this to low quality soils, or is it a substitute for fertilizer? What are the -- what are the applications that you're selling it into?

>> Bildo Saravia: So I say I have two type of clients, you know, just to break it into two groups. So I have the guy that is like most, that he just wants a McMuffin in the morning, wants a Big Mac, you know, in the -- in the -- in lunch, and he's going to eat the nuggets and the fries with the big Coke, you know, for dinner, you know? So he probably knows that that it's not the best, you know, but he thinks he's great because he likes it, you know, and it works. So I say to him, you know, like don't you feel bad? Don't you have, you know, tired, you know?

>> Tip Hudson: Right. Because you have a belly ache the next day.

>> Bildo Saravia: Why don't you take Tums, you know? So you easing it. So that's what happens, you know, when we have a process of farming where we're using nutrients from a synthetic source, from oil. So we are putting too much of it -- too much of it, and we're not allowing the plant to break it down, you know? So all that extra nutrients are going to flow into river streams, are going to go into erosions, are going to pollute. And Tums is not enough for that. You know, if you use live out of Tums, you know you'll die. But I cannot offer you more, you know? And then I have the other client, you know, and it's the folks I like talking with that is people that think like me, and they know that only eating healthy, you get nutritious, you know, nutritious value. So that's to that client I say, okay, take this all the time. The other guys is a Tums, you know, a little, a little thing, you know? But to these guys, here's your salad, here is your juice. And I have clients, you know, that do hydroponics. I have clients that do hortalizas, you know, tomatoes, broccoli, nut trees, apple trees, alfalfas.

>> Tip Hudson: Coffee?

>> Bildo Saravia: That's an application for everything, you know, and at the end of the day, we're not inventing anything, you know? I said we're going to the beginning. We're going to the way things 200 years ago were working, you know? We think of our great grandfathers, cancer was probably very rare. If we think of our grandparents, you know, they start getting sick of it. Our parents, you know, and our kids, you know, we're seeing children, you know, way more and more, you know, getting these horrible disease. Well, I believe that there is an accumulation of toxins, you know, generate genetically, you know, like coming so can we change in the immediate time? Yeah. Do we have the will? Well, that what we need to construct, but sure, we have the capacity, you know, because these technologies exist now, and I hope more people think like me, you know, and more people compete with me, and more people try to do better than me, because that's the only way, you know, that we can ensure that things will start getting better, you know? I'm not afraid to say -- and my business partner sometimes gets like, Bildo, you talk too much. If that inspires them, you know, to do better, why not?

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: You know what am I'm losing?

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Bildo Saravia: Nothing. I'm just winning.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Better future for your daughters.

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah. I mean, like I could be selfish, you know, and say, oh no, until I make a lot of money out of this that, you know, what I'm going to win with that? Maybe I'm going to lose that time, and I'm not going to achieve what I desired, and then I have a double loss. But if I give a little extra, you know, what I believe I can do every single day, life always pays back, you know, and it pays back to the people that do the right thing.

>> Tip Hudson: You're good. That was a brilliant transition, again, to my next question. You mentioned in your talk that we're only here for a short time, and even if we live to be 100 years old, it's still a short time. And the implicit question to the audience was what will you do in your short time? What do you want to give to the world? I felt like that dovetailed really well with Maria's talk and her comment that the Mongolian proverb that the giver is gifted, meaning that being generous and doing good to your neighbor is a blessing to the one who's doing the giving. So how do you answer that question? You began to answer it just a second ago. What do you want to give to the world?

>> Bildo Saravia: Look, like I said, you know, we're really not taking nothing, and we just leave moments, you know? And if we're -- I want to be grateful, you know, for every single second, you know, that life is giving me because that is a true gift. You know, being conscious of how lucky we are by just breathing, you know, and then if we have nice wearing clothes, you know, we can have this nice dog, you know, when the weather is cold outside, we can wear a jacket, you know, we can have shoes. So all those things, you know, start adding value, you know, to how -- to me, gratitude is the capacity to be happy. If you're not capable of being of having gratitude, then you don't have happiness, you know? So I just want to be happy, you know? Want to be happy by working a lot, you know, because, to me, effort is happiness or working the extra, you know, feeling. And I want my daughters to recognize that, you know, that the only way to be happy is to work hard, to be grateful, and to reconcile with yourself when we fail. You know, because at the end of the day, we're human beings, and sometimes we're too tough on ourselves, and we forget, you know, that we're just doing the best that we can. So I don't know, I just want to feel, you know, that by the moment, you know, I have the chance to say, oh, I served just to be happy. You know, knowing that I served as much as I could.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, love that answer.

>> Bildo Saravia: Lauren.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah, no, absolutely. And the fact that you can see lessons in failure because the greatest lessons that you can learn and the most advances you can make are in making those failures. It's trying the things that you're afraid to try and learning so much in the process. You go to Australia, would you have started up mezcal production had you not gone to Australia?

>> Bildo Saravia: Yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: You know, I mean, like it's these experiences not only enrich you personally, but it enriches like what you bring to the world as well, and seeing these different cultures and the different places. I mean, there's plenty of people in the US that think about, you know, like, okay, on my property, what are multiple things that I can do? What about multiple species of animals that I can raise and these diverse systems, and how can we maintain that? And it takes a certain level of effort and ambition. I mean, obviously Bildo does not lack energy, right? And so having that desire and motivation to really not be afraid to step outside and think, well, what am I going to do today? And to take the time to appreciate the little things, not just in work, but in the life that we live in, you know? I mean, we're blessed living in rangelands, where we get to see some of the most amazing landscapes in the world, you know, and some of the coolest species and have cranes circling above your head as they're flying south for the winter and getting to participate and share that love and joy with the network of people in rangelands that, you know, are not just in Mexico, not just in the US or Canada, but across those regions and across the world.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, I feel like that's one of the things that I'm hoping for with an international year of rangelands and pastoralists because there really are amazing things going on that used to be common, but now, I mean, even in America, you know, what's the statistic that 100 years ago, 80% of people were involved in agriculture?

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: And today it's 2%?

>> Lauren Svejcar: It's machines.

>> Tip Hudson: Right, right. And so people have lost that connection to land, I think, and I feel like one of the things that is consistent among or that unites this crowd are the society of range management and people like us is sort of this love of land and people and seeing the beauty of the synergy between those two things. And I feel like we need to do a better job of making that known to the rest of the world. Because I also think that it gives hope to people that you live in places like -- I'm not bashing them, but name any city, you know, New York City.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: In fact, I think to your point about human health, there was some report about a big longitudinal study that was tracing the decline in immune function in kids over time. And one of the common denominators in this longitudinal study was that so many children's bodies are never exposed to living soil.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yep.

>> Tip Hudson: You know, if you're in a city, what's coming in contact with your skin and your feet and getting into your mouth is break dust and smog and rubber crap.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Gas byproduct.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, and it's not -- it's not living soil.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: In a normal environment -- I'm calling normal one where you're have at least some contact with the real earth, your body's constantly being exposed to these low-level pathogens that don't have a negative immune response because your body's constantly being trained to deal with it.

>> Lauren Svejcar: And direct connection with happiness. So there's a lot of studies showing that soil, and especially like working with the soil, like if you're gardening or doing things like that, it increases your opportunity to be satisfied with life and also can reduce medication. So in mental health situations, they've done studies with mental health patients where, if they have them working with plants and working with soils, they reduce medications by 200%.

>> Tip Hudson: What do they call it in Japan, forest bathing?

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: I think something like that.

>> Bildo Saravia: And, you know, on this team, I've seen the amazing opportunity, you know, that we have of living on the land, you know, and how do we share it, you know, beyond our family, you know? So we have two daughters, you know, six and three. So during COVID, well, what are we going to do? You know, like we don't want them lagging behind, you know, so it was that challenge, you know, those things that we're living at that time that prompted us to do this Artesano Montesano [phonetic] thing. And it's just what Lauren said, you know, when kids are capable of just embracing, you know, getting dirty, you know, it's when you ask a kid, you know, and he tells you that an egg comes from the supermarket, there is something not well, you know? And if we do a study, you know, on most kids, you know, you will realize that a lot of them, you know, do think you know that most of the food comes from the shop. So we need to get them in contact with chickens. They need to go and see that meals come out of the cow. They need to realize. Why? Because the other day, somebody was telling, you know, my kid, you know, here never seen how they milk a cow, you know, until he saw it. Now he doesn't want to drink any milk. So I don't know. I just think, you know, sometimes we got to take our kids, you know, say, hey, pick up a stick, make a wand out of it, you know, because that's how magical and with powerful are, you know, and we really take from them the guidance, you know? I tell Luciana, my eldest one, you know, you're my teacher. She was born being a teacher, you know, because I had never been a father. So who is teaching who?

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah, I do think it's all connected. One of our other speakers this morning, Sriranka [phonetic], is that how you pronounce his name?

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: Was a messiah man from Kenya. And he described this Kenyan greeting may you arrive home to find your children laughing and later mentioned that you don't -- you have to have healthy land in order for a people to be prosperous enough that you have food and shelter and clothing and where the children can live a life in which they're free to laugh and be healthy.

>> Bildo Saravia: And that's what Allan Savory said, you know, like the father of holistic, you know, in his conference, you know, he was very strong, you know, because he spoke about family, you know? He said land cannot be managed. People can. So the first thing is manage your family well, you know, take care of your family. And I think, you know, that part of what we're seeing today is, yeah, little by little, you know, this -- our human family, in general, has been decomposing. We've been breaking, you know, and we're alienated, you know, from understanding that we're a species. And I don't know, I'm a believer, you know, that evolution is experienced every single day, you know, and we're evolving for better, it's in the mind. It's in the thoughts. It's in what we can achieve by just thinking, you know? And if we can think well, we can act well. So I think it all begins, you know, with the power of the thought. Can I think better than what I thought yesterday? Yeah. So we can all think, you know, there is hope. And we start feeling hope, we'll live hope.

>> Tip Hudson: Truth is how we act.

>> Bildo Saravia: We are faced with so much happening. You know, is -- we're in the -- in the -- in the time of news and polarization, you know? And I'm not saying that it's wrong or bad. You know, at the end of the day, the world is what it is. But what I do believe is that we need to think in the -- in this frequency of love. You know, we need to stick to that. Because if we don't love our plant or places or nations, of course, you know, but when you put love of the planet, you know, it's about with, you know, what we're seeing with the pastoralistas. You see all these people around the world, some of them, you know, with very harsh conditions of living, you know, because it's poverty. It's not a lot, but it's still, you know, they do this with love. So I don't know, month of love, love the grassland. Everything I love.

>> Tip Hudson: No, I love it. Most of the listeners of this podcast are going to be the people that are still sort of in our crowd. And so as much as I would like to pound on the pulpit about the synergy between land and people and doing it well and telling that message to the, you know, to the city folk and soccer parents that don't know about it, that's not this podcast, probably, although it'd be fun to try to do some of that.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Another time.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah. But the people that are listening, I think, do need to know. Most of us feel like we're somewhat helpless to try to get that message out.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: And I think, you know, one of your roles, Lauren with this IYRP group is to help people find ways to get that news out there.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yeah.

>> Tip Hudson: How can people who are ranchers and conservationists and the other natural resource professionals do something, anything, to try to promote this message and the International Year of Rangelands?

>> Lauren Svejcar: So it was interesting because I was having a conversation with someone at the meeting the other day, and they said, well, I haven't -- I don't have a lot of time, right? Everyone's busy. Everyone's working 24 hours, running around with kids, working on ranches, doing their farming, etc. But the reality is all you have to do is one small act, and if all of us are doing one small act together, that's a huge impact. And so we're putting together materials, build those part of an outreach project, as well as ranchers in the US and in Canada, in addition to extension professionalists, artists, and folks who deal with this connection of not just the silo within our own profession, but other professions. How do we communicate? So we're really good about talking about soils and grasses and plants, but how do you communicate that with someone who knows nothing about it? And not only how do you communicate it? How do you make them care? And so working with these different professionals is really critical. And so what we're working on is messaging and materials that can be taken to elementary schools, to public art exhibitions, to your public library, and it only has to be reaching out to one group to say, hey, would you like to hold an exhibit? Would you be interested in holding a film festival? And so we're working with the Society for Range Management and with the Rangelands Gateway to come up with a portal, a place that people can get materials to take those materials and reach out. Because something you hear across all three of our countries and all over the world is we live on our ranch. How do we make people care? And how do we get people to stop to think about rangelands? And the answer is we do it together, and we do it in bite-sized pieces so that we're not all overwhelmed. And if everyone's doing one small thing, it's not a small thing, really, it's still a big thing. But then we're all doing it together. That impact just explodes exponentially.

>> Tip Hudson: And so it could be something as simple as downloading a PDF of a coloring page that you give to your neighbor --

>> Lauren Svejcar: For example.

>> Tip Hudson: -- who's a third grade teacher.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Yep. Or, for example, before I came to Society for Range Management, a friend of mine from high school is actually an elementary school teacher in San Francisco, and she was telling me, oh, man, it's going to be rainy this week. That means the kids are going to have indoor recess. That means I get no break. And I said, well, would you like some coloring pages and a video to go with it to keep them entertained? And so last week, that's what she did. She gave a whole bunch of fourth, fifth grade students in their school coloring pages from our rangelands, materials that we're producing that are being done in tandem with videos so that there's this duality of materials. So not only do you have coloring pages, you have links to videos that are being created by producers like Bildo, who's very, very progressive with doing video production to get people -- make people aware of what they're doing and then have that story that kids can take to their parents as well, right, that multiplicity of people that you can then take when you -- when you have materials taken to not just one person, but a wide range of people.

>> Tip Hudson: And when will some of the short films associated with the IYRP be available for people to just go find them?

>> Lauren Svejcar: We're working on that right now. I'm going to give you a very amorphous answer because the answer is I don't know.

>> Tip Hudson: Yeah.

>> Lauren Svejcar: But we're hoping to have a portal on the Rangelands Gateway. Stephen Bramwell with Washington State University, your counterpart over in Thurston County, has already created a website that we can use for now as a landing page. And so I would say if people want to get involved, we'll have the landing page, and we'll be asking Barbara Hutchinson and Ann Waters-Bayer with the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. They're the people who maintain the IYRP website, iyrp.info. And so we'll have those materials available through that website for the time being and then have a public-facing platform on the Rangelands Gateway, hopefully in the next coming months, depending on funding.

>> Tip Hudson: Great. Well, as soon as those websites are available, we'll have them listed on the show notes for this episode --

>> Lauren Svejcar: Oh, perfect. That would be great.

>> Tip Hudson: -- which will last for a while.

>> Lauren Svejcar: That would be fantastic.

>> Tip Hudson: We could talk for hours.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Sure could.

>> Tip Hudson: But Bildo and Lauren, thank you very much for joining me. This was wonderful, and the talks this morning were excellent. I was inspired, and I'm looking forward to doing something with the people around me to promote rangelands and the people of rangelands. Thank you for what you do.

>> Lauren Svejcar: Thank you. Appreciate you.

>> Bildo Saravia: Thank you very much. You know, for what you do. You know, the academy part, you know, is the base of progress is education. So I just want to take this space, you know, to reach out to young American students that you'll be great if you show in Mexico. You know, we can try to find a way, you know --

>> Lauren Svejcar: Come to Rancho el Ojo.

>> Bildo Saravia: -- through your universities because you'll inspire people down there. You know, when people go, and they see the passion that they have, you know, and how they commit and all the effort, of course, we also have that in Mexico, you know? And if they can come and also share it, you know, to hear -- so I think, you know, we need to find more common ground in order to supply funding. I don't know what we need to do, but we can --

>> Lauren Svejcar: Do it together.

>> Bildo Saravia: -- do it together and find the spaces for they can reach out. So yeah, thank you.

>> Tip Hudson: 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 home page 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.

>> Speaker 2: 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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