York starts push to Washington, D.C.

He would like to become the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota, but first, Mark York wants to talk about agronomy. And math. And bananas.

Though he’s the seventh generation to farm the land near Lake Wilson in far southwestern Minnesota, York has strong roots in Steele County.

The grandson of the late Eldred and Mary Phillips, York’s mother Rosemary grew up on a farm in Deerfield Township and graduated from Medford High School in 1977.

He has aunts and uncles who still live in Owatonna.

Early plans

Mark is Rosie and Jim’s York’s only son; he graduated from high school in 2007 before heading to South Dakota State University, where he double-majored in math and agronomy.

“There’s no one who had ever done that double-major at SDSU,” York said, “but I love both, so I studied both.”

The goal at the time, he said, was “either go farm or be a plant breeder,” with a focus on higher yields or plants resistant to rust, invasive pests and diseases.

“Actually, right now we’re going to need some plant breeders in the world to make better bananas, because there is a fungal disease that is ravaging Cavendish bananas,” York said.

They make up more than 95% of the bananas sold in the U.S., and are facing extinction due to Panama disease, which spreads through soil, water and infected plant parts, leaving soil unusable for decades.

And York is right: Scientists have found a potential genetic roadmap to develop future bananas – so plant breeders can get to work.

“You can go all the way back,” he said of his interests. “When I was in fifth grade, I won the southern Minnesota science fair” with an ag-based project, “and in sixth grade, I won the southern Minnesota Math Masters competition.

“So I’ve always kind of found a way to do a bit of both,” York said.

“Even running for Senate now, I want to do things to help farmers, but I also want to do things to help us harness the power of AI and build the industries of the future here in Minnesota.”

Where he’s been

He farms 80 acres of crops in Murray County, alternating between corn, soybeans and oats.

In mid-February he brought in 100 feeder pigs.

“I think there’s some things the government could do – for not even crazy money – that would really reduce the risk and balance the livestock industry. I would love to see more of that happen,” York said.

He was the student body president at SDSU as an undergrad, lobbying the Brookings City Council on behalf of the college and introducing a bill in the South Dakota Legislature.

York started his career at Cargill as a data scientist with a grain trading team before being hired by a startup company to build out a data science team, focusing on agricultural risk.

Along with some Cargill colleagues, in 2016 he launched a nonprofit originally called Tractors for Africa that collected used farm equipment from the upper Midwest, refurbished it and sent it to farmers in Burkina Faso and Ghana.

Still operating in Ghana, now under the name Farm Yield Africa, the organization provides tractor services, seed and fertilizer on microcredit to about 2,000 farm families.

“We roughly doubled a year of income for these farmers by providing all the services they need at the right time,” York said, “and essentially guarantee a market for a portion of their grain.”

The African farmers often “don’t have any transportation and don’t have any storage, for the most part, so we give them a fair price,” he said.

York remains a board president; there are 25 employees who run the operations.

His career took him to Boston, where he worked for McKinsey and Company, a business strategy consulting firm. York worked mainly with agriculture clients, “from fertilizer and seed companies to the grocery store and food processing.”

Another opportunity awaited him in Massachusetts when he enrolled at Harvard for a PhD in computer science.

“You’ll notice this thread here,” York smiled. “It’s farming and math.”

What he’s learned

York knows there are difficult topics around every corner, including the advancement of artificial intelligence, national security and mining.

He is quick to say there are concerns with the use of AI, especially its use of energy.

“I think if you look at the history of technology, every technology has great power for good and for evil,” York said. “I think the question we should ask ourselves as a society is, ‘how do we get good without the bad?’ And some of the good things maybe would be bad if they happened too quickly.”

He spent part of the last year working at the Pentagon, “and it’s something we’re keenly aware of. At the same time, there are some existential risks,” such as terrorism and hackers.

“It’s happening, and no one really can stop it,” he said, “so we’d rather have it here, where we can build it ethically … and prepare our workforce and regulations around it. When a new technology comes out, it often creates new uses and possibilities that we’re not aware of until we get it.”

As he neared the completion of his PhD, he was contacted by a “major social media company.”

Their offer: “They wanted me to use reinforcement learning to increase the amount of time that people spend watching videos. And I just thought, ‘gosh, I came all the way from the farm, from Lake Wilson, and I was able to learn all these incredible things – is this what it was all for? To get people to spend more hours watching videos?’”

Instead, a former colleague suggested he apply for a White House fellow. He was one of 15 people selected from a field of 1,200 applicants.

He served with the nonpartisan program at the Pentagon in the Office of Strategic Capital under President Joe Biden; then on the National Energy Dominance Council under President Donald Trump.

Mine minefield

He joins several Republicans in the race, including former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, former U.S. Senate candidate Royce White and former GOP chairman David Hann. They are all seeking the GOP nomination for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat.

Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and U.S. Rep. Angie Craig are running for the Democratic nomination.

Though the seat is a federal one, York speaks often of plans that involve Minnesota, specifically about mining.

His campaign manager and her husband are environmental engineers, “so I have very credible people to go to” about the three proposed mines in northern Minnesota that would provide copper, cobalt and nickel.

“I think it’s very, very important that we do the review process as required by the 1972 National Environmental Policy Act,” York said, asking questions about the acids being used, assurances there will be no chemicals leaching into the groundwater and soils, and preparations for a 100-year flood.

“Those engineering plans need to be very well constructed,” he said, with a timeline that makes sense.

York said on average, it takes 29 years to open a mine in the United States, tied for slowest in the world with Zambia.

He proposed “really working across government to accelerate permitting, training the tradespeople (and) use the existing government loan programs and grants to make sure we can get the right mines and processing facilities open, so we don’t depend on China for things that we desperately need for our national economic security.”

Campaign platform

“Through my whole life, I’m interested in getting things done, in moving the needle,” York said. “So I’ll focus on areas where we can actually make movement.”

His platform has three focuses:

• Stop fraud by using analytics and AI “to scan government payments for fraud before they go out the door. Our own Government Accountability Office said there is $200-500 billion a year lost to fraud. So that means we’ll have more money for our programs, right?”
• Make childcare more affordable. “The third most expensive daycare (average) in the country is here in Minnesota; it’s more expensive to send your kid to daycare for a year than to send them to the U of M,” thanks to well-meaning restrictions. The state has lost more than half of its family-based daycare providers since 2011, York said, so he proposes using development block grants from the federal government, with limits on the restrictions the state places on the grants. He believes it would have bipartisan support.
• Build, baby, build. “We have to make it easy to build things, including mining. It’s about starting new companies and creating jobs. Minnesota is 41^st now, of all states, in new business creation,” York said. “My aspiration is to make Minnesota a center of innovation and job creation; this state built the 20^th century, in many ways, and I think we can build the 21^st. I’m running for U.S. Senate, but I think there’s things we can do.”

He also thinks his message is “much more concrete than anyone else I’ve seen in the U.S. Senate race, and we need to make it visual and exciting … and (voters) will see how it actually moves the needle for them.

“I’m a guy without name recognition,” he said. “I have a truck; I’m a farmer from southwest Minnesota and I intend to get to every county in the state and spread my message, to get the word out, to build a movement: You need to get enough people excited to get your ideas done.

“Academics and statistics aren’t enough,” York said. “You need to get enough people nodding along, saying they’re excited for this to happen. That’s how it should be, because this is a democracy, not a technocracy.”

Minnesota Republicans will hold endorsing conventions this spring, and a primary will be held on Aug. 11.