Minnesota Turkeys Travel to D.C., Hope for Presidential Pardon

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Meet John Zimmerman

John Zimmerman is a second-generation corn, soybean, and turkey producer from Northfield, Minnesota, raising around 100,000 birds a year. As part of his role as the 2024 chairman of the National Turkey Federation, this week he is delivering two turkeys from a special “presidential flock” on his farm to the White House, where they will be presented to and — they hope — pardoned by President Biden.

In this week’s episode of 15 Minutes With a Farmer, we discuss why Minnesota is the biggest turkey-producing state, the important role producer groups play, and how turkeys and the technology farmers use to care for them have evolved.

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Fun Fact

In 1950, the official Thanksgiving turkey was delivered to President Harry S. Truman by Mr. and Mrs. Warren Johnson, the grandparents of Successful Farming Editor Emeritus Betsy Freese. Warren Johnson was president of the National Turkey Federation that year.

At Johnson’s small turkey farm in Oxford, Pennsylvania, all the processing was done on site and by hand with local labor. “On Pop-Pop’s farm, turkeys walked 100 feet from their pen to the processing plant,” Freese said. “They were the finest Thanksgiving turkeys on earth.”

Transcript

Please note: This transcript has not been edited.

Lisa Foust Prater: Welcome to the 15 Minutes With a Farmer podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Foust Prater. My guest today is John Zimmerman, a second-generation corn, soybean, and turkey producer from Northfield, Minnesota. He is also the 2024 chairman of the National Turkey Federation.

In each episode, I have a quick 15 minute conversation with a farmer to hear their story and share their experience, expertise, and life lessons.

John Zimmerman: My father started raising turkeys in the early 1950s, so I’m a second generation turkey farmer. I went to college at Iowa State University, then worked for a poultry integrator company in western Minnesota for a number of years, and when my father died in 1999, I decided to return home to the farm, and I’ve been raising turkeys, corn, and soybeans ever since.

Lisa Foust Prater: And so your father was a first generation turkey producer. So what made him decide to get into that business? I know Minnesota is a big turkey growing state.

John Zimmerman: I think that was part of it. He was in the Navy in the early 1950s, grew up on a dairy farm. I think after he got out of the Navy, he really didn’t want to milk cows, was looking for something different. He had explored poultry production in FFA in high school a little bit. And there was this nexus of individuals in Minnesota that were really innovative in the turkey industry. I’m thinking of names like Heisinga, Earl B. Olsen, which is part of Genio Holden Farms, things like that, that were neighbors and peers to him that helped him get started in the industry. So he was able to start on a pretty small scale through FFA projects and things like that and just work his way up. it was something new, was something different and it wasn’t milking cows. I think that was the main thing.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right, I mean, dairy is a very labor intensive, time intensive industry. So I can definitely see where he would maybe be looking for a change. So what makes Minnesota so popular for turkeys?

John Zimmerman: A few things. Number one, as I mentioned, the people, we just had some innovators that were looking for something different in that, you know, the timeframe of post-World War II, but then also access to corn and soybeans was another big thing. And availability of labor. I mean, honestly, we had people around here that, you know, crop farmers, it really matched up with some crop farmers as they were expanding, bringing other people into the operation. They could raise poultry on a smaller scale and get bigger. And so that helped also, but I really do think it’s the people that started it. We just had a group of innovators in that timeframe that wanted to get the industry going and they were able to work together and learn from each other and the industry just blossomed because of that.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. That’s so great. Seeing just the innovations in different industries, I know, you know, in dairy, just seeing how the changes in that industry have just revolutionized the way cows are milked is so fascinating to me. So what kind of changes have you seen in your time in the turkey industry? And maybe, you know, maybe since your father started, what sort of changes have you seen in the way turkeys are raised and handled?

John Zimmerman: Well, I think first is the bird itself. You know, it’s not genetically modified. There’s no hormones used in poultry production, but through genetic selection, we’re raising a much larger bird, much more efficiently and in a much shorter period of time. I just actually marketed birds this last week and they were roughly 40 pound toms at 17 weeks of age. You know, back in my father’s time in the 50s and 60s, that bird at that age may have weighed 25 pounds. So we’ve almost doubled the weight of the bird in a similar amount of time.

And like I said, they’re much more efficient now as far as their feed conversion. It takes roughly two and a third pounds of feed to raise a pound of turkey now. Back 20, 30 years ago, was way over three to three and a half pounds. So the efficiency has increased tremendously. And outside of that, years ago, we raised turkeys outside on range and we still do some of that.

But we’ve moved into climate controlled barns that are all controlled by computers. I have my cell phone sitting here and I can see every one of my barns on my cell phone nowadays. We’re experimenting with robotics. We’re experiencing labor shortages just like everybody in the industry. So we’re trying to find ways to be more efficient and produce a quality product, but with less input, specifically labor. So a lot of the things you’ve seen in other industries, there’s mirrors in our industry too.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s so interesting. I would imagine in Minnesota where the winters are very cold, that having climate control, that is really key. And the weather can be unpredictable throughout the entire year. So just being able to control those things from your cell phone is so huge and frees you up to maybe do other farming and other things in your life as well.

John Zimmerman: No, that’s true. I was just recently out in Washington, D.C. for my work with the National Turkey Federation, and it’s just handy to be able to check in on things, whether it’s cameras or just through our computer systems, you can see exactly what’s going on. And not that I don’t trust my employees, but it’s nice to have that security blanket of always knowing what’s going on. It can be a curse sometimes, too, but it’s usually pretty helpful to be always connected.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right, right. I wonder what your dad would say just seeing these sort of technological advances, not only in the birds themselves, but in being able to just pull a phone out of your pocket and see inside the barns and monitor the temperature and the feed and the birds themselves. It’s pretty amazing.

John Zimmerman: You know, I’ve often joked that my father resisted the touch tone phone. But when I look back on things, almost everyone in the turkey industry had to be somewhat of an innovator because their neighbors who were doing and nothing against dairy or standard conventional agriculture at that time. But when your neighbor starts something new, like raising turkeys, you kind of look at him like he’s the crackpot. So turkey farmers had to be innovative and maybe a little bit eccentric to start this new venture. Cause it was, you know, there was no processing for that. There was no infrastructure when they all started. So they had to be pretty innovative to start.

So I would hope he would take innovation in stride. Obviously, as we get older, we maybe ossify a little bit and don’t like change as much. But I think we all have, you know, periods of time where you have to accept that change, because the industry is going to change whether you like it or not. So

Lisa Foust Prater: Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, one of the dairy farmers I interviewed once had such a great statement where he said, every day is the worst the technology is ever going to be, that every day it improves. And I just thought that was such a great way to look at it and such a great quote that it’s true that, you know, every day it gets better and better. And there’s always something exciting to look forward to with with the technology and the way that the way that you care for your animals. It’s fantastic.

So you mentioned the Turkey Federation. So talk to me a little bit about how you first got involved, maybe on a more local level and, you know, your involvement and why that’s important for you as a producer.

John Zimmerman: Sure. Well, it all goes back to the size of the turkey industry and our status within agriculture. We’re a very small industry. I mean, we’re actually labeled as a minor species in most things. And a lot of times we’re overlooked by chicken, you on a national scale, poultry is poultry and they don’t differentiate. So being a small industry, those of us in the industry really have to step up and participate. Otherwise we won’t have a voice.

So I think Minnesota has kind of been at the forefront of that because we’re one of the states that has the most family farm or independent growers in the turkey industry. A lot of other areas in the country, it’s mainly corporate owned farms. So Minnesota has a lot more farmers that are actively engaged in the turkey industry. So we’ve always had a number of individuals, a number of families that have been active in the leadership of our state organization, the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. So my father was chairman of that organization. So was my mother. And then I won’t say it’s expected, but you are expected to participate. So when the time came, I got on those boards and participated and became chairman of both the research council and the association.

And it’s just important because if we don’t have that seat at the table, whether it’s on the national level or the state level, somebody else is going to. And there’s a lot of headwinds. We have people who don’t want to eat meat. There’s people who think what we do for a living is environmentally unsound. So we need to tell our story and we need to be present and active. Otherwise we’re going to get ignored. So I just think it’s incredibly important to do that. And as a grower specifically, I think it’s important that our voice is heard within the industry. It’s very nice that the, the national level, on the state level, that our trade organizations represent everything from farm to fork. Growers like me to CEOs of some of the largest processors out there. And we’re all in the same room.

That’s not, that can’t be said of all industries. So I think it’s something special in our industry that we’ve been able to all work together for the common good.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right, and you know, those folks who have negative things to say about the turkey industry, the poultry industry, farming in general, they have very loud voices. And so it’s really important for these producer groups to, like you say, to have a place at a table and to use their voices to share their stories with the public because you know, it’s sometimes it can be hard to overcome those loud voices and it’s an important story to tell.

So as part of the National Turkey Federation, can you talk to me about anything special that happens around Thanksgiving with any particular turkeys around Thanksgiving time?

John Zimmerman: Sure, sure. one of the perks, and I’ll preface this by saying this has been a pretty difficult year for the turkey industry. We’ve been dealing with high-path avian influenza, avian metanumovirus, really poor markets. So it’s not been the greatest year to be the chairman of the National Turkey Federation. But one of the perks is that since 1947, the chairman of the National Turkey Federation has been invited by the president to bring one or two turkeys out to the White House. And most recently, this hasn’t always been the case,

But those turkeys are part of the national Thanksgiving turkey presentation. And then the president officially pardons those turkeys. In the past, these birds were presented to the president with the intention that he would consume them for Thanksgiving. That’s times have obviously changed. And in the George Bush administration, they were pardoned.

So my son and I and some neighbor kids have been busy. We placed a special flock of birds called the presidential flock in July, and we’ve been raising them up. And then, the week of Thanksgiving here, we will take two of those birds. They will be put into a very special vehicle and hauled out to Washington, D.C., where they’ll spend the night at the Willard Hotel. And then we’ll take them to the White House and we’ll have a National Thanksgiving Day pardoning celebration with the president. And after that, those birds are pardoned. We have to find them a forever home. And then we will return them to Minnesota and they will live out their lives at Farm America in Waseca, Minnesota, which is Minnesota’s Agricultural Interpretive Center.

So we hope that they can be ambassadors for our industry and that school groups and other people who visit Farm America can interact with the birds and hopefully learn a little bit more about our industry at that time.

Lisa Foust Prater: It’s such a great way to feature the industry. I mean, of course, Thanksgiving is a huge time for the Turkey industry.

And here we are, Thanksgiving week. So it’s a big time for the turkey industry. What does the National Turkey Federation do specifically to prepare, promote for this biggest week of the year for the turkey industry?

John Zimmerman: Well, having a holiday that focuses on your industry and your specific protein is a blessing and somewhat of a curse because we always want to make sure people realize they can eat turkey 365 days a year and we grow it 365 days a year. But that being said, it’s nice to get the spotlight shined on your industry for that Thanksgiving week. So in the past, outside of the National Turkey Thanksgiving Day presentation at the White House, we don’t have a specific marketing plan like you know “got milk?” or “Pork, the other white meat” because we have a lot of you know corporate entities that have their own brand and they do their own special thing but lately we’ve been doing a lot with turkey smoke.

So we’re trying to get turkey more involved in backyard grilling whole bird cooking and smoking so we’ve we’ve engaged with a lot of the national barbecue societies for smoking competitions and barbecue content competitions and just trying to showcase people that especially the younger generations who maybe don’t want to cook a whole bird and put the time and the investment into that, but they will invest significant amounts of money in a pellet smoker and significant amounts of times doing a brisket or whatever. And we’re saying, hey, you can do a turkey the same way and it’s delicious. So we’re trying to innovate different ways of serving that typical Thanksgiving meal or turkey any time of the year, but trying to get turkey in the new spaces and new places.

That’s one that’s gained a lot of traction recently is especially since COVID when more people were at home and maybe experimenting with cooking a little bit more. But smoking turkey and barbecue space like that is something we’ve really pushed strongly and seen some good push, you know, some good feedback from the people who’ve really said, Hey, this is kind of neat to have a different choice of protein to put on our grill. So.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, yeah, that’s such a great idea. You know, some people may be intimidated by like, I don’t know how or need to cook an entire turkey, but, you know, having the options of those different cuts available and they are so delicious, especially I love smoked turkey, it’s so good. So having those, promoting those different options and ways of preparing turkey is such a great idea.

John Zimmerman: Anytime we can be a little bit more innovative and just try something new and get that novelty out there and get one more person to try it and like it, you know, that’s a win for us.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, absolutely. So with Thanksgiving week coming up, I have to ask you, what is your favorite way of preparing turkey or how does your family celebrate Thanksgiving with turkey?

John Zimmerman: Well, obviously this year with my travels to DC our plans are a little bit skewed more than normal So we may be something on the road But in most cases we go to probably my in-laws to my mother and she’ll cook a traditional turkey but one of my favorite things is probably the smoked turkey roasts where it’s boneless white and dark meat together and we can just slice it up and make sandwiches and use it throughout. The leftovers are great.

Lisa Foust Prater: Absolutely. I mean, one of the best things about Thanksgiving is the leftovers and, you know, turkey casseroles, turkey soup, turkey sandwiches. It’s so good. so thank you for all the work that you’re doing for the turkey industry and agriculture in general and wishing you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful trip to D.C.

John Zimmerman: Thank you very much and thanks for having me.

Lisa Foust Prater: Thank you for listening. Open the latest issue of Successful Farming or visit us online at agriculture.com for more interesting features and news for your farm. Join me next week for another episode of 15 Minutes With a Farmer, and we wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving.