I'm a former mayor.
I'm a former mayor.
I failed.
But you did.
You were very successful.
Well, thank you.
People are very nice that way and still greeting me that way.
I do too.
And it's genuinely just very nice of them.
I don't ask for it.
They'll request it.
After I retire, after I retire, I wanted to say, hey, there's DJ Don.
I want the title.
DJ Don.
DJ Don.
How are you doing?
DJ Don.
That sounds like you're ready to start spending some records.
Yeah.
John Dickard is with us.
So good to have John with us here.
And after you left the job as mayor, you had some other interesting jobs you dealt with.
We're going to talk about these later in the water industry, right?
And now you're into the food industry, but you're always into something that's going to
help mankind.
Instead of it's not a greedy industry.
It's like, here's how we're going to help people.
Well, that's the whole idea is I like to fix things.
And when you have a problem, the best thing to do is just hunker down and start fixing
it.
And that's what we did.
What we did while we were here.
And I was blessed with great people around me that helped me do that.
But when I got out into, you know, I got out of the world of the Great Lakes and then
Governor tasked me to run the state and local finance for the state of Wisconsin.
So fix that.
And we had to do with that.
And I just told them that I needed to go on and fix some other stuff.
So left the governor's appointment and got into consulting.
And so I work in areas where we're trying to fix bigger global problems.
Come over my house.
I give you a list of things that needs to be fixed, including me.
I don't think it's a global problem that you have to, you're glad to be problematic.
In my mind, it's a global problem.
Let's talk about the, before we get to the water, because I want to hit on that fork
farms.
That's FORK fork farms.
This is a Wisconsin based company up in Green Bay.
And now you explain to me what they do, and it's very interesting what they do with
food.
Right.
And tell me where you're involvement in this whole thing.
So back in about 2010, there was a huge golf oil spill a lot of people remember and
President Obama sent out a task force to figure out what happened and what would happen
if they didn't clean it all up because it was really, really bad.
And what they found was that it was going to, if it hit the coast, it would decimate shellfish
and things like that.
It all kinds of food that we eat for about 20 years.
So I came back to Racine and said to a bunch of people, hey, listen, we got to figure out
how to start doing our own food, because we can't rely on other people.
The data back then was pretty bad, and it's still pretty bad.
We rely on the majority of our fish from China in other countries, over 70%.
We get from outside of the United States.
And the food that we get, we are basically the Department of Ag is paying a lot of farmers
a lot of money to grow food that doesn't even stay here.
So we are growing food with pesticides and everything else that really are harmful to
people.
We have the impacts and the effects.
So what I started doing was back then looking around for how do we start growing regional
food?
It's more sustainable, it's safer for us because if we have food regionally, we don't have
to worry about outside sources.
And I really started working hard in that area as a mayor to try to figure out how to
do that.
And we started working with the University of Milwaukee on their aquaculture program,
which is to this day, just number one, from everything I've seen in the world.
So then I met up with these guys during another project I was working on, and we started
talking, and I said, I've looked around for people like you that grow food indoors for
a long, long time, but I've never seen anybody that's had the secret sauce, and these guys
have the secret sauce.
They have figured out how to do it the most efficient, effective way that I've ever
seen.
So what do they do?
They grow indoors, they use a reflective technology when they're growing it.
Basically, the pot is about 5 feet tall and looks like a big octagonal table, but it's
tall.
And the manner what they use is they have the lights that go down the middle of it, and
then all the light refracts around because it's all white.
That's growing the food.
Right.
So they hit it like sunlight, but it's better for a couple of reasons.
Number one, you can do it 16 hours a day versus mother nature is roughly less than six hours
a day.
So they're getting all that sunlight, right?
They're getting all the nutritional value that they need from the light.
When it refracts in the white light, then the panels are white as well.
When it refracts, the plant actually absorbs 100% of the area around the plant is now creating
that photosynthesis and growing because of the way that the light refracts, right?
And that and the way they have the pods set up and how they how they do it with the water
tank already as part of the unit.
And you just check your pH and add your nutrients when you need to.
So when you're done, you've got number one, no bugs because you're inside.
And number two, you don't have to wash it.
You just break it off and you eat it.
What is it?
You can grow so many different things.
What?
Give me the lab of example.
Really?
Colored greens, tomatoes, strawberries, beans as it tastes the same as the farmer would
make.
No, it's so much better.
And I will tell you this, we brought, we had some folks down from Illinois that were
looking at this in Cook County.
And we were up at a school because we're in schools in every state in America.
We're at a school showing them eight units that were connected together and he said,
how much food are you growing here?
And she said enough to supply her entire school system.
With lettuce.
Wow.
Yeah.
So I said, I said, do you want some?
And he said, what do you mean?
I said, well, this unit over here is at full growth.
So we would over and we snapped off a piece of a regular and ate it.
And he just, his eyes almost popped out of his head.
He said, this is amazing.
Now, are these, is this food sold in supermarkets?
Well, not yet.
And that's where the reasons that we're all working together is to start looking at
doing, to expand outside of where they are right now.
Where they are right now is they're in every state and union in schools and other places
like schools.
Oh, schools, they do sell the schools.
Schools are wildly crazy, because the kids can grow that they learn because there's
curriculum that comes with it.
So they can learn how to grow the plants.
And then when they're done, they can either eat it and put it in their salad bar, which
a lot of schools do, or they can actually sell it.
So they learn how to sell food and make money.
So they do that.
They, right now we're in 12 countries.
And what we're looking at is why not commercialize this?
Why not go back to that very original thought of making food locally?
And let me give you an example.
We have a project going on in Rockwell that we're going to be announcing in a couple months.
And Rockwell Automation said, we love this idea.
We want to give you 7,500 square feet to produce food.
And then we want to be able to analyze it and test it and everything else to make sure
that your system is the most effective that we can possibly make it.
Guess what?
7,500 square feet is going to grow in a year.
How many pounds have let us?
And think about how heavy lettuce is, right?
It's not very heavy.
268,000 pounds of lettuce and only 7,500 square feet.
And what kind of, you said many countries all over the world, some impoverished countries,
because they really need food.
Well, that's the thing is they do need it and they don't have it.
And that's one of the things that we're looking at here is we're starting to talk to other
countries about this and how we're going to do it.
But the biggest thing is they also need water.
Not a lot.
98% less than they normally use, but they do need water.
So those couple of areas we've talked about, we just met with some folks in Africa a
couple of weeks ago.
The biggest issue is do they have the money to do it?
Do they have the money to buy the units to actually do it?
You know, we always talk here about in a third world country, the father says to the
family, I have to go out and find water.
I'll be back tonight with the water and the medicine I'll be back tonight in this country.
My Wi-Fi is not working.
Yeah.
Why is the Wi-Fi out?
Yeah.
I mean, that's how spoiled we are here.
We are.
We are pretty spoiled.
That's my parking space.
He lost some guys walking for 12 hours to find water for his family.
Right.
Usually they make the women do it and the African countries they make the women do it and
the women then can't go to class because they're spending all day getting water.
But to think, so right now we're in Barbados, Canada, Cayman Islands, Denmark, Israel,
Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and that's a couple that we're in
right now.
So we're all over.
We had a huge Caribbean effort going on, but unfortunately USAID was taken away.
The funds for USAID were the ones that were going to fund it.
We were going to put it on the islands that were hit most by hurricanes because once they
get hit by hurricane, they only have two-week supply of food on their islands.
Our guest, John Dickert, this morning, we're talking about food around the world.
We're talking about the company.
Now how are you with this company, Food Fork?
Are you like CEO?
How is that work?
Fork Farm?
No.
I'm just a consultant.
Okay.
They brought me on to help take them to kind of that next level where we're doing more
regional for you.
We're doing it at a larger level.
You're always doing something.
Well, you know, God puts you on this planet to do something, right?
I figure that's to fix stuff.
54 years have been playing music on the radio, but that's good.
You're getting us together, right?
I got to talk about this and we'll talk more about Food Fork.
The big short was a movie came out several years ago and it was about a doctor played
by, who's the guy who played Batman, I can't think of his name.
And he said there's going to be a bust in the housing industry.
The calculations and sure enough, Goldman Sachs, when I the business, there was a bust
in the housing industry.
He predicted it.
And that's what the movie's about.
At the end of the film, they show him on screen and he said they say the next thing he's
working on is water.
That's going to be the next problem in this world, water.
And everybody in the theater went, water, what's the matter with water?
We have no no water.
We have water.
They started the pet because this movie was true.
It actually happened with the, with the housing bust.
You got involved with water.
Yeah.
I've been involved with water since I was in grade school.
I mean, the first, I know you don't like bottled water.
I know.
I know.
This is like you.
This is like you.
The devil's brew.
It's spring water.
Well, yeah, sure.
You don't think so.
Well, you sometimes you just don't know, sometimes you don't know bottled water.
It says right here.
Spring water.
Yeah, but it's that bottle water is not tested.
So you really don't know what it's about water.
The devil's brew.
I don't know if it's that bad.
So let's talk about the water, bro.
Yeah.
So I started in when I get my first optist or historical speech in sixth grade.
I gave it about the river and how the river was so polluted.
And after talking to my grandfather, he told me that they used to swim and drink the
water right out of the river when he was young.
So I really realized that it was right before the clean water act and the clean air act.
So I wanted to do something to make that water clean like my grandfather added.
So the big short, which is a great moving, if you haven't seen it really should, it talks
about why the housing market failed.
And unfortunately, some of those same things that created that failure are back again now.
So I, you know, I'm very concerned about where all that's going, but when he's talking
about water, he was looking at the fact that there are, there are problems, even though
the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the, they're really still our issues.
We've got PFAS, we've got microplastics, mercury, lead, all kinds of issues in our water
that are impacting us and we have to clean them up.
And these are, you know, leftover from industries that had been polluting the past plus things
that we're doing now.
Now if you want to watch another really great show that I think was the same impact from
a knowledge base as the big short did was watch dark waters with Mark Ruffalo, who's
of one of our own.
You know, this is the story of the man who found PFAS, which is forever chemical, which
is really, really bad.
And that's one of the companies I work with as well.
We try to clean up and destroy PFAS.
PFAS is a chemical, it's the strongest chemical man has ever created.
It's a, I believe, a six carbon link chain with a fluorine, I never had chemistry, but
a fluorine bond in the middle, it's, it's so strong, it's what they use to put out
fires with, a firefighting foam, because it cannot be burnt.
It's what they put out the panels of the space shuttle so that when they're coming in, they
don't burn up.
It was made during, believe it or not, the Manhattan Project to kind of control all of the heat
and things that were going on.
Then they started using it in, in regular usage, which is spray on things on your clothes
to be water resistant, stick resistant plant pans, and things like that in, in dark waters
shows where they finally found that this was impacting animals and how the, the cows were,
you know, drinking water out of the stream and they're getting bloated and dying, and
he tracked it all the way down to 3M.
And they found that they had just been dumping the remainder of the stuff basically.
Did they know what it was when they're dumping it?
Of course, they didn't care.
They found out in the 50s what it was doing to people and so where is this PFAS?
Where's it located?
What is it in?
The water.
It goes, it moves in water and it's everywhere in the world.
Now I told you my wife gets the water from petrified springs over here in Kenosha.
You know, they have that aquifer thing that runs there and used the good water, right?
Well, depending on the aquifer, it's probably really good water.
But she used to filter it and you said, don't filter it.
Don't filter it because there's good minerals in it.
Smells though.
Those are the minerals.
I know.
It smells.
She drinks that.
That's the only water she drinks.
Yeah.
It's probably drinking really healthy water.
I mean, I've never, I've never tested the aquifer there, but the reason, one of the reasons
we don't have a lot of PFAS in the water intake in the Great Lakes is because it's so
diluted.
There's, there's PFAS in the Great Lakes, but it's so diluted that it's not a big issue,
right?
Well, that are, that are around the state, around the country, and around the world.
You find PFAS.
As a matter of fact, it's, it's so bad in some areas.
There's a 3M plant.
I believe it's a 3M plant up in the Rhineland area.
They found an area there that it was so bad that the, the feds give a level.
It's called a 4PPT level, 4 parts per trillion, 4 parts per trillion.
They feel is lawful for humans to drink.
It's like one drop of water and eight swimming pools, a little bit swimming pools.
So up in, in that area, up there, right outside of Rhineland, they tested and they, so 4 parts
per trillion is okay, right?
They're at 44,000 parts per trillion.
So they are basically drinking pure poison.
And people started dying.
Where is that?
Up in a little town right outside of Rhineland.
So they, they tested it and ironically enough, a couple of the legislators up there said
this is all farce.
This is all nonsense.
But they have people getting cancer and dying of cancer up in Rhineland or in, in area,
in levels that are just beyond.
Remark to them.
We have attention.
Aaron Brockovich.
Well, this makes, I think that was hexachromium, right?
Yeah, hexachromium.
So this makes that look like it's nothing.
I mean, PFAS is far more dangerous and far more impactful on you than that was because
it concentrates in your body.
It concentrates against a certain level and then either brain or liver just, you're
done.
So these people up in the Rhineland area are dying of cancer and they, they started in the
average ages in the 60s and 70s.
And now people are in the 30s and 40s and dying.
John Dickard is joining us here.
He's a consultant for fork farms based in Green Bay, right?
Yes.
Based in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
They, they give food to the world, but you said not commercially yet, right?
Not commercially.
So one of the things that we're looking at is if we're growing 268,000 pounds of food
in 7,500 square feet, what happens if you make that 40,000 square feet?
And so the data is indicating that, and we're talking to investors who are talking to
some people actually locally about this, about, you know, how much can we provide?
So for instance, if we're in 40,000 square feet, there's enough to provide from the
border to, you know, Oak Creek, all the lettuce that they would need for the year.
Now, if those are the cases, you 98% less water, 98% less energy, and basically you're
down to zero when it comes to driving instead of driving this stuff, 1500 miles from California,
you're literally driving to five miles down the street.
How do the farmers feel about this?
It's well, basically putting them out of business.
Well, no, it doesn't because the, the requirements for food are growing.
As a matter of fact, one of the things that the feds have been looking at is increasing
the productivity of the United States by 25% or the next five to 10 years of food because
the rest of the world is having difficult defining places to grow food with constant rains
and changing climate. You've got heat and cold going on at times that they're not supposed to
happen. So people are seeing less and less opportunity to grow food on a regular consistent
basis. Number one, number two, I think Wisconsin's losing about 100,000 acres a year in farmland.
From development and things like that by my church, they have three farms gone already.
They're putting housing on it. Right. So if that's happening, we're actually losing our farmland.
So we're looking at it from not taking over from the farmers, but actually helping the farmers,
talking to farmers about doing this indoors. So they're not only growing crops once a year.
They're growing crops year round. And that's the issue we're looking at. We're not talking about,
you know, getting in anybody else's way. It's about how do we grow more food, healthier food
for people to eat because one in five people in America's obese, the amount of health care costs
that we have right now in America is $5 trillion. The average person used to spend in the 70s,
when I was growing up, less than $2,000 a year on health care. Now they spend an average household
spending about $16,000 a year on health care. So the numbers are not going in the right direction
for our health in the best way to deal with that. And you know this because you look fabulous,
you've been working out, you know, working on eating better food. I've been working on eating
better food is you eat healthier food. And when you do your body reacts. And we see that in the
studies that we're doing with kids, when they eat the food that they grow, they not only are more
productive, but their grades are starting to go up. So we're testing this methodology and seeing
what's going on and realizing it's not rocket science. You feed kids good food. They're going
to respond well. I don't understand this. In school, when I was a kid, and we're talking about
the 60s, mainly they, you had a choice with your lunch in the hot lunch. Do you want bread and butter
or peanut butter and jelly sandwich? You know, small one. Nobody would say they've been a peanut
allergies back in the 1960s. Did people have them back then? Well, my allergist is what I consider
one of the best in the region. And she told me years ago when I started getting allergies that I
never had before. She said more and more adults are getting allergies that they never had before.
And more people are getting allergies because of the processed food that we eat. It's
wreaking havoc on our body, basically. Processed food is bad because it's a lot of chemicals.
The body's not designed to break down chemicals. It's just not. It's designed to break down the
food that we have on the planet, not chemicals. And sugar is an additive like that. Those things
are horrible for your body. So all this impacts our health care, right? Because it costs more money
to keep people healthier because they're eating worse food than they used to eat when they're kids.
We, I mean, what did we have? You know, grocery stores were a thing when we were growing up,
weren't they? You walked to your grocery store or you took a very short car, right? Your grocery store.
Grocery stores are all moved out of the cities now. Okay, we had Delhi. It's a lot of Delhi
existence where I grew up. We had the meat market down on Northwestern, right? We had the meat
markets all over the place. We had them downtown for cradle out. So now people don't have access.
They call them food deserts. The fact is we've just, you know, I heard that term for the first time
a couple of weeks ago, food desert, because we don't have access to good healthy food or even a
grocery store. I heard that for the first time. I don't know what they were talking about. I
should have called you. I got you phone number. You too. Hey, John, that was two in the morning.
I'm watching TV. I heard food deserts. Where's that mean? Well done. Let me get in the other
rooms. I don't wake up my wife. You know what the thing is that everybody thinks the food deserts
are just in the cities. Actually, the rural areas have worse problems with food deserts.
I was just talking to my best friend in North Dakota and he said, right now, the average person in
rural North Dakota has to drive 30 minutes to get to food. So how is it that you're able to get
to access to good healthy foods? If you have to drive 30 minutes in each direction to go get it,
that's too expensive on the average person. So we have, we have unfortunately incentivized
big box stores to go out into areas outside of cities and build. We need to stop incentivizing
that candidly. We need to get smaller grocery stores back in the cities. And primarily,
they're going to have to be co-ops because the big ones, they don't make enough money doing it.
I can't wait to go on badegas. Yeah. Sure. A little grocery stores. Yeah. Yeah.
Where I grew up, there were like three giant grocery store chains, not within walking distance,
but you could ride a bicycle to them if you wanted to. Right. We had the A&P, we had bohacks,
and we had another food store, which not around anymore. And you can go any one of these stores.
Yeah. Remember they had those big things in the windows with the price, those painted things?
You see what the price, you know, me 10 cents a pound. I used to actually when I was a young kid,
the Red Cross drug store downtown on Sixth Street, I used to actually make those little displays
in the front windows at 14 years old. So yeah, I mean, that's the way it was. And people look back
and they say, well, those are the good old days. No, those were the days where we actually had food,
we had, you know, local pharmacies and things that were competed against in our elected officials
literally pushed those, you know, giving incentives to those companies while they move out of cities.
So you're where? I mean, what was the last big box that we just built and was incentivized
by the city, which was a woodman's, right? So it's lower across food, but where is it? It's on the
edge of town. So it's not in the city. It doesn't help. It's next to four other grocery stores.
So we're not incentivizing and helping people to get groceries in their communities. So one of
things that's happening with fork farm is we've got grocery stores and places like that that are
and I'll say to us, how many of these can I get and how, you know, how fast are we growing in
this food? Well, one, you know, tabletop or not tabletop, one table sized unit that's about five
feet tall will grow 28 pounds a lettuce in 28 days. Give us a website. People can check this out.
Forkfarms.com. Fork. That's F-O-R-K Farms.com. All right, that's good. Once you see it,
you'll be amazed. It's I've been amazed and I've seen it firsthand. When you eat the food,
same thing happens with kids. I didn't see it bring samples in or anything. You came in
it with those samples. I'll bring you some samples. Well, I want it now. We're talking
among right now to be 28 days and let's get what it was in here. Okay. Thank you, John, for coming
in. It's always a pleasure. Former mayor, John Dickard now involved with fork farms and also
still doing water. Still involved with fresh water, trying to get us some clean water somewhere.
Gotta do it without deadly chemicals added to it. Now, with the water case different if they
take the deadly chemicals out. Well, it'll taste different but more importantly, it's better for you.
You told me once the best water in the world is the tap water. Yeah, it still thinks so. Absolutely.
Okay. That's why we were rated number one water in America. Yeah, good for you.
All right, guys. Many women do a great job at the water department. You make me ashamed of what
I'm doing for a living. If it wasn't for you, how would people know? I just feel like
come on. I think anything. You are. Society will never hear about any of this stuff if you're
not on the air. Yeah. Well, thank you, John, for coming in. Oh, he's a pleasure. I do appreciate you. Yeah.