Microscopic Marvels: Melody Benjamin

In this episode of Microscopic Marvels, you will hear from Melody Benjamin, a cattle rancher from Nebraska. From wrangling livestock to wrangling researchers, Melody details her experiences of managing one of the most fascinating ecosystems in the world: the Nebraska Sandhills. She shares her background in land management, her community involvement in local agricultural initiatives, and how she ended up hosting scientists on her land. Stay tuned to learn more about how ranchers are some of the best conservationists around. This episode was hosted and produced by University of Florida School of Natural Resources and Environment graduate student Patricia Escobar-Torres and Department of Agricultural Education and Communication graduate student Emma Poole.

Transcript

00:00:10 Patty

Hi everyone, welcome to our streaming science microscopic Marvel series, where tiny organisms are a big deal. Streaming science is a student driven science outreach platform that introduces listeners to real world scientists and professionals in the agriculture and natural resources fields. I'm your host, Patty.

00:00:31 Patty

A master’s student in interdisciplinary ecology at the University of Florida.

00:00:35 Patty

I'm joined by my co-host Emma, a master's student in agricultural education and communication. In this series, we're talking to scientists, ranchers, students and storytellers about nematodes.

00:00:50 Patty

They are nearly invisible, microscopic worms that can tell us a whole lot about our environment.

00:00:56 Patty

In this episode, you will hear from Melody Benjamin, a cattle rancher from Nebraska. Melody is heavily involved in local agricultural initiatives and is interested in collaborating with scientists for the benefit of agricultural policy and best practices. Her work on the Nebraska Cattlemen's Association Conservation Board.

00:01:17 Patty

Led to her involvement in this project, where she hosted a team of researchers on her land to study the nematodes in the Nebraska Sand Hills.

00:01:26 Patty

We discussed melodies background as a rancher, what it meant to her to collaborate with scientists, how she believes other ranchers could get involved, and what she hopes for the future of sustainable ranching. Let's learn more about Melody and the microscopic marbles around us.

00:01:47 Patty

OK, so before we get started, I'd actually love to have you introduce yourself with anything that you think is important for us to.

00:01:56 Patty

Know about you?

00:01:57 Melody

OK. Well that sounds good.

00:02:01 Melody

We've had this ranch for about 35 years here in Nebraska, we have a ranch in Colorado and needed to expand, moved here about 35 years ago. And I worked for the Nebraska cattleman, which is a membership organization that advocates for the cattle industry for 25 years.

00:02:22 Melody

Just retired at the end of last year, so I am back helping my son 100% of the.

00:02:28 Melody

Time on the ranch and loving most of it. Not. Not really excited about missing the sleep that we're missing right now. Check Jeffers all night long but.

00:02:40 Melody

Loving, loving, being back, taking care of the cattle and and seeing, seeing things that I didn't get to see when I was working full time. For example, we have a lot of shore birds come to around these lakes that we're going to be talking about and a bunch of goals showed up yesterday which is really exciting to see in that. They're kind of a harbinger of spring.

00:03:00 Melody

Although we know that we're in the middle of a.

00:03:02 Melody

Blizzard in the next two days so.

00:03:06 Melody

Love, love this ranch a lot. I think I've probably walked every square foot of it at some point in time. We like the wildlife here. We know that the wildlife is in good shape. The cattle are going to be in good shape and we try.

00:03:21 Melody

To.

00:03:21 Melody

Keep that very compatible with each other so.

00:03:26 Melody

Just really enjoy ranching and taking care of nature.

00:03:33 Melody

Bounties.

00:03:33 Patty

That sounds like such a relaxing and fulfilling retirement. I'm so happy you get to do that with your son. You mentioned the Nebraska Cattlemen's Association and from what we understand, that's actually how you became involved with the grant. Could you expand?

00:03:52 Patty

A little bit on that.

00:03:53 Melody

Sure.

00:03:54 Melody

So as part of my duties with Nebraska cattlemen, I sat on the Board of Directors of Conservation Group in the Sandhills called Sandhills Task Force, and through that.

00:04:05 Melody

We had done some different work with the game and parks here on different things and one day one of them, one of the guys I've been working with is to say, would you be interested in letting some researchers come to look at the nematodes in these lakes? And we've always been very big advocates of allowing.

00:04:25 Melody

Researchers to come. Nebraska's 97% privately needed property, so for any research is going to be done private.

00:04:34 Melody

Land owners have to participate.

00:04:37 Melody

And we've always felt that it was important for everybody to know that we're doing a good job. If you say Nope, you can't come on here, it raises suspicions. So we we've always been very good about if they ask for an opportunity to research kids. So that's how I got started with this particular project. We've had several going on. In fact, we have two others.

00:04:57 Melody

Going on right now on.

00:04:58 Melody

The place of different researchers doing things.

00:05:00 Patty

That actually leads me to one of the topics I have saved for later with which was your perspective on collaborating with these scientists. You mentioned that there's kind of like.

00:05:12 Patty

The culture of if you don't let them on your land, you might have something to hide, seeing as Nebraska is mostly like most of Nebraska's land is privately owned. Do you think that's part of the justification for letting researchers on your land?

00:05:27 Melody

I don't know if I don't, if I'm using it as a justification, I just think it's important. It's pervasive and and it's because there's always been a bad situation that someone's heard about and it's got blown out of perspective, somebody sitting in a an office somewhere or deciding how things are going on a ranch and making a theory that.

00:05:47 Melody

It really isn't what's going on.

00:05:48 Melody

On and somebody has gotten trapped in that. So there that gets amplified. People talk about it everywhere and there's just some suspicions. And if you learn any researchers come, they're going to find something to try to shut you down. And we that's never been our experience. And I learned a whole lot. But I'll tell you, I didn't know what a nematode was.

00:06:08 Melody

When I was.

00:06:09 Melody

First asked about this, but I learned a whole lot about.

00:06:11 Emma

I feel like with social media too, that idea of people who are outside the scope of the situation, finding something wrong with it has just amplified itself so much, because now anybody too can go and take their camera on their phone.

00:06:33 Emma

And video something and post it and.

00:06:36 Emma

Blow it out.

00:06:36 Emma

Of proportion and suddenly it becomes this whole thing of how.

00:06:40 Emma

Inhumane and how awful the agricultural industry is, and I see it so often with ranching too, even in Florida and around the entire nation, honestly. So I don't think we could overstate the importance of, you know, having people like you who aren't afraid to kind of bridge that gap between ranchers, between the cattlemen's associations.

00:07:04 Emma

In the public, because, truth be told, a lot does go on between in between those two parties. That one or the other might not understand, and so just reaching them on a personal level, I feel like is important. So I'm glad we talked about.

00:07:19 Melody

I agree with you. Our social media has made it worse, but actually the Sandhills task force got started back in the late 80s when this site stuff was going on there. There were people making proposals about how we should be running our ranches in the sand hills, and they've never been on a ranch in sand Hills. So it social media, probably.

00:07:39 Melody

Simplified the problem.

00:07:40 Melody

But it's been there for quite a while.

00:07:43 Emma

I feel like this kind of leads to something else we wanted to talk about a little bit too. A lot of the people who are going to be listening to our podcast series might not be familiar with Nebraska Sand Hills, and I know that you and I had talked about it previously a little bit that there are actually a lot of similarities between the sand Hills and Florida, even something that seems so far away.

00:08:03 Emma

Tell us for the listeners who may not have heard of or even visited the Nebraska Sandhills. Tell us a little bit more about.

00:08:10 Emma

Sand hills.

00:08:11 Melody

Oh, I'll be glad to. So if you haven't, you just need to kind of look into it a little bit, but I'll tell you a little bit about it. It's the largest intact grasslands still in the United States. There's been very little development as far as even farming on it. Breaking up the ground. There's some here and there. But for the most part, it's just ranching.

00:08:31 Melody

Country it's also on the flyway of all the migratory birds that fly from Mexico to Canada. So, like I mentioned, the goals earlier we're we're about to see a whole lot of birds. I'm seeing a few snow geese going over here, so lots and lots of migratory birds.

00:08:50 Melody

There's further east of where I am. There's live water, creeks and rivers starting, and live water freshwater lakes right where we are. Of course, 1 of what we're looking at is the alkaline lakes where I'm at. It's it's just a God's cow country. We like to say because it's just a great place to ranch.

00:09:11 Melody

And it sits on top of the Ogallala Aquifer, which is a very large aquifer.

00:09:17

That.

00:09:18 Melody

Spans from the Dakotas clear to Texas.

00:09:21 Melody

Because we are so Sandy, we're kind of the sponge that soaks up the precipitation that feeds that aquifer. So we provide water to a lot of people across several states.

00:09:34 Melody

Not, I mean, not all of it.

00:09:35 Melody

Comes from us.

00:09:35 Melody

But there we are. The big sponge that.

00:09:38 Melody

Soaks up the water for the aquifer.

00:09:41 Emma

I feel like we kind of relate to being that big sponge to being on top of an aquifer with the limestone bedrock.

00:09:47 Emma

It's like the.

00:09:49 Emma

That's like the combination of dreams or nightmares. Whatever you want to call it. But talk about some of the wildlife. And of course, you know, we're going to ask you said you learned a lot about the nematodes that have that they've been researching and the alkaline lakes. So those are just another one of the little creatures that we might not be able to see.

00:10:08 Emma

Tell us more about the nematodes. What have you learned about those throughout your participation with the grant?

00:10:15 Melody

I have no idea what a nematode is, but it is a super microscopic worm. I guess it's the best way to describe it. It's an animal, but I I'd say a worms. The best way to describe it, and they feed off of various things. That's why they started doing the research here. These lakes are so high in alkaline that that doesn't support.

00:10:35 Melody

Any life, in fact, if you get the water on you for very long, it really kind of burns your and alkali type burn. So they just wanted first to find out if there was any life in the lakes and they did find those. And now they're they're pretty plentiful and some different varieties of them. So they're researching.

00:10:53 Melody

Where they're at, why they're they're what they're feeding on, which I'm understanding is some bacteria and some degraded plant things that are floating into these lakes. So it's just kind of interesting to think of all those little microscopic guys out there figuring a way out to live in an environment that nothing else can figure out how.

00:11:13 Emma

That does not sound like a very delicious diet to me. Bacteria and random stuff that's floating in a lake. I would not want to be eating that, but clearly they are. Clearly, they're doing a pretty good job of it. I was kind of familiar with nematodes because you F actually has quite a large nematology research department to deal.

00:11:32 Emma

With the strawberry research that they do farther down in South Florida, near where I'm from.

00:11:38 Emma

And I got to go down there and look on the microscopes at the nematodes and they are really worm like, honestly, they are, they have little mouth part. They're like a little worm. So that that was something that I was kind of shocked at to that that would probably be a close comparison.

00:11:55 Melody

Yeah, that was the best way I could describe it when they showed.

00:11:57 Melody

Them to me it.

00:11:57 Melody

Was just like a little tiny worm.

00:12:00 Patty

I've never actually seen a nematode. Maybe I should look some some.

00:12:06 Patty

It's just up on Google.

00:12:10 Patty

I think that the gist of what I'm understanding is that it takes a lot of people to make something like this come together. It takes the perspective of the land owners, it takes the perspective of those that work in policy, those that are those researchers that are interested in coming onto your land. It's a lot of collaboration.

00:12:31 Patty

A lot of moving parts.

00:12:33 Patty

What do you think is?

00:12:35 Patty

Your favorite part about being part of something bigger than maybe what you could accomplish on your own.

00:12:42 Melody

Well, the favorite part was when everybody came to visit this fall, that was just fabulous. I just loved every bit of it. You know, we're used to having one or two researchers come at a time and we we've had a time lapse camera going for a while. We had to move it because we were moving the fence line and we had a time lapse camera going for several years. So they.

00:13:01 Melody

Would come and change out their little.

00:13:03 Melody

Shipped every once in a while.

00:13:05 Melody

And visit with them. But we didn't have. I think there were 13 people here this fall and it was. It was interesting to visit with everybody and everybody's perspective and what they were doing. And it happened to be. We had just weaned our calves and we were moving the cows away and we had to hold them up for a little while so they didn't get in the middle of that because that would have disturbed.

00:13:26 Melody

Everybody up and everybody just start falling and fussing around again, but to have them, their perspective of what we were doing with the cattle and how important it was in the overall scope of keeping the grasslands in, in the shape that we're keeping them.

00:13:41 Melody

And and the questions that they ask, I just to me, that's what's really important about all this. I learned a whole lot from them, but I'm hoping they're learning a little bit from.

00:13:50 Melody

Me as well.

00:13:51 Patty

I think something really important that they're probably getting from you is learning the fact that land owners are probably some of the biggest conservationists around, they're.

00:14:03 Patty

Really interested in keeping their land healthy and, you know, prosperous for generations to come. Would you consider yourself to be a conservationist?

00:14:14 Melody

Yes, I do consider myself a conservationist. We call ourselves ranchers, but actually what we are is just harvesters of sunlight and grass.

00:14:24 Melody

And without being a conservationist, you're not going to have that grass. We're in a we're in a pretty severe drought right now. If you're not a conservationist, you're probably one of them that's not prepared for that drought and aren't taking as good care of the land we've already had to make a decision to sell some cattle. We've already sold some cattle just because.

00:14:43 Melody

Well, winter isn't when we're growing grass. We just can see that we're not going to have the grass this summer because we haven't had the moisture. So yes, we are conservationists. We, we can't do what we do without the environment being perfect for those animals. And so we are conserving this the land, but we're also taking care of all the wildlife that's around too.

00:15:03 Melody

So without us, they wouldn't being placed for them to drink because they're drinking from our tanks and they they get a good healthy dose of minerals and all those things we put out for the cows too.

00:15:13 Emma

You definitely are a conservationist and so many farmers and ranchers are, and people don't think about that because really without people like you, you know the sand hills in another timeline do get fragmented up and researched like this isn't possible in some alternate dystopian reality so.

00:15:35 Emma

So it is literally so important for people to understand that yes, I love what you said you we are all harvesters of grass and sunlight and I think that's such a beautiful way to put it. But I I know kind of going back to what you said about hoping that they're learning a little bit.

00:15:55 Emma

From you 20, they definitely are. We heard so.

00:15:58 Emma

Many great things from the other people who were on the trip about just being able to interact with you guys and how inspiring it is to see someone who truly cares about the land and understands that you know it's a mutual relationship. We take care of the land, the land takes care of us and that I feel like was all inspiring.

00:16:18 Emma

Everyone who got to witness it. So no, you definitely are a conservationist and I think we need way more of those types of people.

00:16:28 Emma

In the world too.

00:16:30 Melody

Well, you know, sustainability or regenerative is or the the buzzwords.

00:16:35 Melody

And that's kind of scary to a lot of my fellow ranchers. Oh my gosh, what are they expecting from us? But they wouldn't still be here after 7 generations or so if they weren't sustainable and weren't kind of doing things right. So it's kind of interesting to me. It's it's like maybe just document what you're doing or just stop and think of what you're doing.

00:16:55 Melody

Because you've done it.

00:16:56 Melody

All along, or you wouldn't still be here. You still wouldn't.

00:16:59 Melody

Be profitable on that ranch.

00:17:01 Emma

Yeah, my family's been in Florida for seven generations, and watching it change and all of that has been.

00:17:09 Emma

So sad to me, even in my lifetime, because honestly, I've seen a lot of things as far as that sustainability and conservation change for the worse, but in my experience, what I've seen is that one thing that is constant is that the people who are connected to the land, the farmers and the ranchers, they feel this kind of innate attachment.

00:17:30 Emma

To the land and understand that they have this huge responsibility now as people continue to move to Florida.

00:17:37 Emma

And I'm sure that Nebraska faces a lot of the same issues too, that these ranch land really are some of the only unfragmented places that are threatened species like Gopher tortoises and some types of snakes like the indigo snake, eastern diamondback, rattle snake and even, you know, other more specific Florida animals like the scrub Jay.

00:17:59 Emma

They really do rely on those like specific habitats. And really I think that farmers and ranchers feel the most burden out of anyone for those specific types of environment because the land is while we're here and it is important to preserve.

00:18:16 Emma

So I've rambled for a little bit about Florida and that's just my little rant, but the sand hills, obviously, rightly so, are very special to you too. So if you had to put into words why it is so important for the sand hills specifically to be preserved, what would you say?

00:18:37 Melody

I think what you just touched on the wildlife, you can raise cattle in a lot of different environments, but there's a lot of wildlife that's very, very dependent on these grasslands for their way of life and I think.

00:18:50 Melody

That's that's the thing we've got to preserve it. Like I said, it's God's country for raising cows too. But of course, it started out as being the ideal place for Buffalo or it wouldn't be in the IT wouldn't be the grasslands that it is so. But it's it's the wildlife being able to to sustain that for for the wildlife.

00:19:10 Melody

I think is extremely important and if we can come along and have our way of life and raise a few cows, which we all love, then that's just.

00:19:20 Melody

Yeah.

00:19:21 Melody

Terry, on top of the pretty good Sunday.

00:19:25 Emma

I'm curious to what specific conservation practices do you have currently employed? Are there any programs or anything like that that you've been a part of that you want to talk about? Or any specific practices that you guys take part in?

00:19:40 Melody

Well, we, like you said, we're having some research done right now on the just different grazing methods that we're using on different pastures. So the universities got some kids that come out and and monitor that.

00:19:54 Melody

We did do an equip contract, oh, 20 years ago, probably so the like that they're they're doing the research on. It's called Floyd Lake and it's a pretty large lake. And we have 6 pastures that come into that lake. Now, the water, of course, is not for the cattle to drink. They will go stand in and it's on a really hot day if they could, but.

00:20:14 Melody

They don't drink from there and when we get to situations right, like we are right now where we're really dry, the shoreline changes.

00:20:23 Melody

And you can't keep the cattle in the pasture, you put them in because the fences are now a long ways from where the water edge is. So we put the did an equip contract to.

00:20:34 Melody

Put a fence around the lake and a ways off of the lake. It it serves 2 purposes. It keeps our cattle where we want them. There was part of the lake that we that wasn't feasible and we still have cattle walk around the edge of the fences on that part of it. But it also has provided a better habitat for the shore birds for their nests.

00:20:54 Melody

Because otherwise the cattle were walking where they were nesting up against the edge of the lake, and now it's provided a better habitat for them. So we're seeing more shore birds.

00:21:04 Melody

But those are the those are probably the two things that we we we do the most. Of course we've we've always for years and years have done a rotational grazing program and like I said we're we kind of monitor when we need to get cattle off the grass because we're not going to have enough grass because of precipitation, so.

00:21:22 Melody

Just kind of what we do.

00:21:24 Patty

I think the more that I hear about the different projects or collaborations that your ranch has done, whether it be with a local organization or the university, I think it's so important to continue to have this representation and research to kind of bridge the gap, which is what this.

00:21:24

Right.

00:21:44 Patty

Project I think is is inspiring to do.

00:21:47 Emma

Or we before we kind of end things. I just thought of something that, you know, kind of off the top of my.

00:21:54 Emma

And you talk about teaching people about the ranching, the conservation practices and, you know, being able to learn more yourself about the, the nematodes and all of the tiny microscopic ones that we may not be able to see with our own eyes. But if you could.

00:22:15 Emma

Have one thing that the public would learn about conservation, about the role that ranchers play for the environment.

00:22:27 Emma

What would you want people to see or hear or learn based on everything that you have done and everything that the research has been able to find on on the property out there in Nebraska? What would you want people to take away from that?

00:22:45 Melody

What you mentioned we we're here to be several generations.

00:22:49 Melody

And knowing the only way that we're profitable and we're only going to stay around if we're profitable, is taking care of this land because it, as you mentioned, come takes care of us. So if it's not good for the wildlife and the birds and everything else, it's not going to be good for our cattle and we're not.

00:23:09 Melody

It's not going to be profitable. So we're we intend to take care of it in a.

00:23:12 Melody

Very direct way and it's not, we're not here just to take what we can and move on.

00:23:20 Emma

I think that's a good message and the fact that that environment has been maintained so well that now the researchers can go out there and find these microscopic creatures who are relying on back.

00:23:33 Emma

Syria to me, I mean, I'm not scientific at all, but to me that seems like a sign of a very well kept and well cared for and preserved Biome. So I commend you for that because that is so likely due to the the good care that is taken of that land. So it is.

00:23:54 Emma

So obvious that you care about that, and of course you're my personal perspective. I appreciate that. But just note that both of us appreciate it, Patty and myself and everyone that doesn't should.

00:24:08 Melody

Well, thank you.

00:24:09 Melody

We didn't set out to harvest nematodes.

00:24:11 Melody

But we are.

00:24:15 Patty

This has been such a lovely time with you. Thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you for everything you do, including today.

00:24:22 Emma

Thank you so much.

00:24:23 Melody

Ladies, it's been a pleasure. And as I've told Emma, if you're in western Nebraska, you have a place to come visit.

00:24:31 Patty

I think we should. We should feel trip.

00:24:39 Patty

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Microscopic Marvels. I'm your host, Patty, and I hope you learned about how ranchers are some of the best conservationists around melodies experience on the land, and her willingness to collaborate with researchers made this episode possible, and a great one at that.

00:24:59 Patty

For more information or to listen to other episodes in this series, visit streamingscience.com.

00:25:06 Patty

Funding for the series and the nematode research discussed in the episodes comes from the National Science Foundation, poorly sampled and unknown Taxi Grant, awarded to researchers at the Universities of Nebraska and Florida.