Loos Advocates for Ag Land Protection

Nationally recognized author, speaker and TV, radio and podcast host Trent Loos was one of the guest speakers of last week’s Know The Risks public forum held at the Barber County Heritage Center just east of Medicine Lodge.

Loos, a Nebraska resident, but a sixth-generation farmer in Illinois, said his start in agriculture while living and working on tribal reservation in South Dakota showed him the importance of educating peolpe about where their food actually comes from before it hits their table.

“It really projected me into everything that I’m doing today because I understand the challenges that we have in explaining modern-day food production to people who don’t know,” Loos said.

The guest speaker shared a comical story about an encounter with a convenience store clerk at one time that didn’t think fish had sex.

“Ma’am, how is it that we get more fish,” Loos asked the clerk.

“Oh I never thought about that,” she responded.

“She live a hundred feet from the Mississippi River, where fish are having sex on a daily basis, making more fish, and she never thought about it,” Loos said to the Barber County crown.

He asked people to think about how many times travelers down Highway 160 have thought to themselves there was “nothing out here.”

According to Loos, however, what is happening in these ares where there is seeming nothing is actually activity that sustains life for even those travelers who have no idea.

“… people taking care of the land and the water turn that nothing into the most nutrientdense food substance that God created,” he said. “You take a ruminant animal and you convert cellulose material that cannot be utilized by anything else and upcycles it into the most nutrient-dense food substance on the planet.”

Loos said there is a battle going on with non-rural Americans who, “think there should be something there.”

“There should be concrete condos and consumers,” Loos said of what those folks think.

 The concern, for Loos, is that the United States has gone from happened since

2000 in grazing acres in the United States and we have gone from 1.1 billion grazing acres in 2000 down to 643 million grazing acres in 2026.

“…we are talking about record low number of beef cattle in the United States because we have converted the grasslands into something else,” he said. “Why is the government giving an incentive of 85 per metric ton to bury CO2 for carbon sequestration when in fact we want to cover all of this land with something that doesn’t sequester anything?”

Loos also addressed the push for farmers to be “net carbon zero” by 2050.

“What’s that about,” he asked. “Well, the human body’s 17 percent carbon. That means there’s no humans. 

“If we go net carbon zero, net carbon zero equals death. Have we thought about that?”

Battle Against Greenhouse Gases

Loos said there is an ongoing battle against four inparticular greenhouse gases that is very important for people to understand.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) “is responsible for photosynthesis,” Loos said.

“The more photosynthesis (the plant) has, the less water the plant needs,” he said. “It seems like more CO2 would be better than less.

“It’s responsible for plant growth.”

Nitrous oxide is what is used to make nitrogen, which is also responsible for plant growth, according to Loos.

“Okay, two of the four (greenhouse gases) are responsible for plant growth,” he said.

The third was sulfur oxide. Loos said there was a change in 2005 to “low sulfer disel” and now there is a push to lower another gas that is responsible for plant growth and soil health, the ag land advocate said.

The final battle is with methane.

“We’ve got to get reid of these cows because cows are burping and causing these methane flares, and it’s just terrible,” Loos said sacarstically.

Natural gas is 94 percent methane, according to Loos, which is used to make fertizler for “plant growth.”

“So for how many years have we been told to mitigate four elements of God’s creation – the cathedral of creation that are responsible for planth growth, and we didn’t even think about it,” he said.

And Loos said the people are responsible, because they let the politicans and government get away with it.

Less Private Control

Loos said the battle against wind farms, solar farms, battery storage facilities and data centers eventually boils down to less private control of land.

He said people have to understand the critical importance of a domestic food supply, because it is actually a matter of national security.

“A country that cannot feed itself, clothe itself and fuel itself is vulnerable,” Loos said. “Common sense.

“We importated $49 billion more in agricultural products in 2025 than we exported. (There’s) no excuse for that.”

The battled for control of the land is as active today as it was during the time of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

“Don’t listen to what history books have told us,” Loos said. “To learn that that was about a lie – a treaty was broken because the federal government learned that there’s gold in them there hills.

Loos told the crowd that the battle for land control was absolutely critical, because eventually it will come down to access to the water.