Farmer Panel on Experiences with Cover Crops and Soil Health - DeSutter, Hill and Emmons

okay gang if you could please grab a seat there'll be plenty of other time to continue your conversations over the next day and a half we want to get rolling this morning to try to stay on schedule [Music] cover crops as as an interesting story had a professor friend who needed a place to do some research and she asked if we had a field that we would you know let her put some cover crops in and so forth and and my dad had had some negative experiences with cover crops back in the eighties and so we weren't terribly interested in cover crops but we agreed to do it you know for her she helped us on some other fronts well we started a seed annual ryegrass didn't really pay that close of attention until was the first week in April and the rye grass that year was probably eight inches tall maybe a little bigger and I was out fixing a tahoe I dug a hole down to get to the towel to fix the hole as I was down in the trench I could see roots down the four feet deep and that was kind of a aha moment I know that if we add up the benefits if we look at where we've been improved one of the first firms we bought a double dare game where we've gone from 2% to 4% that that 2% organic matter gives us 60 more units of any year at current market rates of nitrogen values that's 50 cents you know that's $30 an acre per year that same 2% of organic capable of holding about 16,000 gallons of water per percentage so 32,000 gallons of water and that's only in the top 12 inches we hope we're creating this phenomenon even deeper in the salt but where'd all these numbers I'm talking about reduce than the top 12 inches so it could be higher but you know that's equivalent to an inch and a quarter rainfall event that we get in August after Katrina and their neighbor doesn't our cover crop plan or the reason why we want a cover crop is a long term view point that the Sun is our free resource and anytime we have sunshine we want something green and growing and putting carbon into the soil back into the soil as we try to rebuild our organic matter back to what it once was if I can retire some day or or look out across the farm and see that we've returned a small organic matter too close to equilibrium for this area I'd be thrilled to death [Music] [Music] [Music] my name is Trey Hill and I currently run Harbor View farms with my father we're partners we're on the Eastern Shore of Maryland or directly across the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore City and we tilt about 40 miles north of here to about 40 miles south we're kind of typical farmers we're corn wheat soybeans we run case and John Deere equipment the wheat is winter wheat that we harvest in late June and then we double crop soybeans into we're probably out the same latitude is like a southern Indiana Northern Kentucky we kind of run in that track with the GDU stuff we've been using cover crops for probably 20 years and varying degrees of implementation we started small with like the equip programs and doing like three or four hundred acres a year then killing them off and now the last two to three years for probably a hundred percent cover crop you know depending on what we get done in the fall this year we're definitely 100 that was kind of my goal to achieve that and our experience we typically use barley because it's at least expensive it's a good cereal it's a good scavenger as the season progresses as we get into later fall we switch to wheat we find that wheat does better when it's colder in terms of germination growth and then we're also experimenting with some cereal rye and some triticale and then we're trying to figure out I guess our big transition the last three years is we used to always kill everything off in March we have a state program that's similar to equip and you have to terminate all your cover crops kind of race to get that done now we've since switched gears due to a couple challenges we had where we didn't get field sprayed or we spread a headland and not the interior of the field we've now made it a gold flannel dream to wear this year we're like 90% planet green my big concern was if we got a really wet spring what kind of mess what I have and I'm fortunate that this year in the wettest spring in the history of the state of Maryland I think we've had rain like nineteen out of twenty one days for the month of May we haven't done anything in May so we planted everything in last two weeks April are actually planted three fields March 27th and then it got cold frosty we planted a green beautiful stand it's a five leaf it looks great it survived several frost two weeks of cold weather looks terrific and I tribute that to planting it green the thing I was missing was when I was killing it off early I always have struggled with getting my no-till to match my conventional ground I come from a you know farm of plowing people I mean my father is you know you ploughed until the field was perfect and you did everything right and that's the way you did it and that's the way you farm and I believe that was the best most responsible thing to do at the time now that we're doing this I still couldn't ever quite get it to match up we'd still take our best fields and conventionally tell them because we weren't getting the yields and I think it was based on emergence so now when I'm planting into a green I'm getting much more even stands my soil organic matter is growing I've got much better earthworms than I've ever had last year was the first year I've ever had my no-till beat my conventional and and we're much better conventional farmers and we are no tellers so he's actually become a believer in it when she's always kind of my my truth tester I'm always looking you know people think I'm a little crazy just because we're planting into stuff that looks like this and I know it's not conventional I know it doesn't look right it doesn't look correct but I'm like well if I could get my father to run a planner and plant into you know headed out barley and be happy with the job the planners doing the way it plants all the fundamentals of farming and then he's happy when we're combining and the yields are better than where we conventionally tilled I'm like that's you know you know wish I'd done it sooner [Music] [Music] you know my vision for the future is something that that I take very seriously and I really think that for as much Bourbon sprawl as we're sin and if you look at the numbers about how many acres of land were using losing out of production every year we have to get better at what we're done we have to preserve the soul and make it as rich and productive as we can and the natural way is the obvious way and it's through growing crops growing cover crops growing your own nutrients to put the organic matter back in the soil it's the natural way and I think if we do that and we spread the news and get the message out and it catches on that we can be more productive in the US than we've ever been since we broke out the land in the 1800's in 1900 we're seeing in the past several years talking about green everybody wants to be green environmentally friendly for the atmosphere I think it's time that we look at the dirt and have a brown revolution to improve the soil instead where it's at get back to the dark rich soil that we all [Music] [Music] well good morning everyone thank you for answering my name is Wayne Honeycutt and I have the pleasure of serving as the president CEO of the soil health Institute it's a nonprofit out of Research Triangle Park and our mission is to safeguard and enhance the vitality and productivity of soils for through scientific research and advancement we say advancement we're really talking about adoption now if you're really excited today because I think we have three of the nation's premier farmers with us that have been on this journey for a while and I think there's a whole lot that we can learn from them so you I'm sure yep it's kind of a little teaser with the video there but this panel this morning is really just kind of you know tease that out a little bit more a little bit deeper depth here from them a little bit really kind of about their journey and so I have right here on my meat left Dan de Sutter farmer out of Indiana Trey Hill farmer in Maryland and Jimmy Edmonds down there Jimmy is a farmer and of Oklahoma and I appreciate the Hat really do another thing I got to tell you before you get going I appreciate is that none of us wore white socks now let's see how tall these chairs yeah you done good is you'd say where I'm from yeah so I also wanted to make sure everyone knows that there's some little index cards and their chairs near you and so I'm gonna ask a few questions kind of dig a little bit here and there experiences but you know we want you all to be able to ask questions too so if you could please write down any questions that you have and then a little bit later on the next half hour or so will lets tell you it's time to hold them up and somebody will come by and pick them up and then we'll try to cycle through some of your questions that work for everybody here excellent excellent well one of the first things I wanted to kind of kick things off and talk you all little bit about is your journey because obviously you're farming a farm have an operation right now that's different than when you first started and I just kind of think it would be helpful to understand what your farm was like what your operation was like when you first started and just kind of tell us a little bit about your journey and what it's like now but then kind of you know some of the challenges you have I recognize we got you know all the way in the East Coast where you get what 40 something inches of rain there in Maryland Indiana but then all the way are out on Oklahoma you got you've got a different issue of no rain at all right you we got different issues and so different constraints with adopting some of these practices with cover crops and some of these other soil health practices and so we'll just kind of love to hear about your journey kind of how you started what the farm was like when you when you started farming what it's like now kind of how you can't overcame those barriers what you ran into and how you overcame then I'll pick on you first since you're closest by again and the best dress okay well I guess I have to give credit where credit's doing and I had a leg up on my journey my my dad gets credit for taking the first step down the soil health path back in 1983 he transitioned our farm which at the time was 700 acres to ridge-till and he did that in a world where we didn't have a lot of the tools we have today and the challenges were numerous and I watched him struggle to make that work and and and that's really all I knew because I was coming of age as he did this so I've had the benefit of not being encumbered by you know the the full-width tillage mindset you know I I'd be a terrible tillage farmer that I don't know the first thing about it so that that's where it started and you know I went away to college it was the 80s the farm didn't look too promising and and I went down some other paths and he had some health issues that brought me back and one of the first things that that we did jointly together we went to Jim Kinsella farm and I'm sure there's a lot of people here that that maybe got to experience Jim back in the late 80s early 90s and and from that we decided to go to no-till and we came back and of course my dad was thinking we should phase in over three to five years and I said no let's let's let's get rid of all that ridge-till stuff and get the stuff we really need to do no-till right and we just did it all at once and and you know that's kind of a commitment we made and really our our practices have evolved in lockstep with our understanding and you know back then we were thinking physically we were looking a you know Jim taught us to think like a root and so we were thinking about physically how do we open up the soil to get roots to go deeper to raise better crops and you know as we stumbled into cover crops like the video showed you know we started to look at different aspects and beyond the physical and and and really the whole biological world started to open up and and our understanding that is still very rudimentary but but I guess where I've come to believe today that if you think of the soil or the system the drive is a three-legged stool with the chemical the physical and the biological I really think the biological Trump's the other two and that if you get the biology right the other tool fall in line if you if you don't get the biology right that nothing else works the way it could and so today you know I think you know the use of cover crops trying to inject more diversity bringing animals back onto the landscape those are all attempts to really FastTrack the biological activity in the soil I really like that the three-legged school because we talk about soil health we really emphasize it we've learned a lot and going a long ways by focusing on the chemical physical aspects as you describe it's that biological component that's really kind of an ex frontier opportunity for us and holds so much promise do you mind if I use that all right thanks Trey could you give us kind of a little rundown of your operation and kind of where it was when you started what issues you've overcome grant where it is yeah I would say say we we were early adopters of no-till but never 100% we could never get I'd say when I was in high school and then when to getting home from Purdue and throw that in there um we were doing about half no-till 1/2 conventional so anything that was hilling anything that had had slope we would no-till and that was because we could get better yields no-till then we couldn't conventionally because they were user miss drought prone soils because the topsoil was already gone but for all our good flat land where we really wanted to push yields we could always grow more with the plow if we plow that made it look nice you got it nice and even and we just could never quite bridge that gap so as we progress we started doing cover crops like I said in the video they were we were burning them off too early and we couldn't figure out how to get that going and then just through basically mistakes Smith sprays everything else we started planting green and yields started bumping up so we looked at it as a team where it's you know regardless of the operator regardless my father myself we've kind of all transitioned to this plant green when her no-till ground I'm still doing some conventional but as the yields were starting to equal out it realized we're spending way too much money getting too much soil erosion and all those things so even my father it was it was like I said he's a die-hard farmer I mean it brilliant built the company we were always big so we want to keep things simple and then you get into Noto and you get into then you start to uncover cross plant them green everything's becomes much more complicated so now we're utilizing technology and and enterprise software and everything else so that we can start to track this stuff so that we can build complexity back into our system so as we're doing that we're starting to realize that the ecosystem this ecological farming with technology is much more complicated so we're better trying to mirror what the ecological system would do so in the planting green we're thinking well mother nature never plants into a dead clean field mother nature plants into growing fields whether it's the prairies or the forests everything's alive when it's planning it's just all in cycles so we're trying to try to better mirror that and it's gotten we're now we're starting to figure the cover crops out and we're trying to get a more consistent you know originally when we started doing cover crops we would kind of just throw them out there this was a bonus thing just you know spread it and go but now we're realizing their corn emergence wasn't even where the cover crops weren't even so now we're treating the cover crop as a crop trying to get it even so we can get back to almost a conventional style planting bed that happens to be you know waste all and green and plowing so I said that's kind of how our or is it you know where dad used to call me because the field was clotting we needed to run the disk over it again now he's calling me because the cover crops not even enough yeah so it's been kind of neat it's been a really fun transition for us as it's really excellent excellent so I've got to ask you the same question Jimmy if you could just kind of fill us in so they kind of get a lay for what you've been going through well mine has been quite a quite a journey in I farmed with my first crop was at 9 years old with my dad and granddad and we were heavy tillage and so we were all three joined at the hip throughout that an early career and in 94 we lost granddad in Iraq my dad had cancer and then we lost dad the following year so it was a big transition period we ginger and I had started no-till ourselves granddad and dad were not quite so willing to do that and so there was a big transition period there and we weren't very good at no tilling in their early days I'm quite truthful about that that we had a lot to learn and and a lot of mistakes made and so we were doing that on some small acres of our own now mother is in charge and and we're gonna do it way dad and granddad had done and that's that's okay with me because we we need to work with mom and understand that and trying to push her along a little bit and then in about 2009 we knew financially that something had to change that inputs were going up costs were going up revenues were going down and we had to make a significant change and so we started in that but as we started into that here came the big drought and you know in 2011 we had about nine inches of rain that year and the following year we had less than that around seven something like that so big challenges with cover crops that year the what we started noticing we had water probes in the ground and in the NRCS was really good with us and helping us pull cores all at once we started noticing that we may be using more water up front but we were lot more efficient with their water and their infiltration rates were better so as the year went along our water was better where we had cover crops even in the drought and so we knew we were onto something and we started planting more cover crops went from a few acres to a lot of acres pretty quick by then mother had turned everything over to us to operate and she said looks like you're you're done fine and so now we're fully covered year around when we're harvest and we're planting we just face planting as we're speaking right now we're dry some of that's not going to come up but we know that a root in the ground is more important than not so we're every time I don't plant even though we're dry that's a mistake we see that time and time again so I never breakthrough anymore I prefer to plant right behind the car my best rules don't always apply we get busy and we can't get some of that done as quick as we'd like but we know that that's the way to do and so we've made a pretty good transition we're trying to track that and much like what we heard earlier we can we can see a darting ladder about an inch or a little better a year if we got cattle or animals implemented into the system and that's pretty exciting or activity below ground is getting much much better it's a once we start putting cattle back in on our cover crops that rate of micro activity escalated I would like to say and it's very important to see that and I understand that and so it's it's been a very good journey and we're still learning a lot of people so you're the expert I'm not the expert I'm just the guy that's at this trying something that the neighbors won't try yeah and to really understand that you've got to look at the soil and you've got to dig and and and use the technology that we had I always like to say my dad and my granddad were great farmers they took great pride in their work and they never intended to degrade the system the way we have but my granddad was always about buying a new tractor or a new piece of equipment he is very innovative in that and so he always used the best technology that was available to him so why not use the best technology that we have and that would be no-till and cover crop systems and I think if we do that and have that basic principle then things will align while we get you warmed up I want to follow up on the fact that your what is your annual precip where you are around 20 inches I never take around 20 I don't know what more ms anymore yeah right do do any other yeah yeah it's either sub or ad yeah and and so and you're in that situation you know we we often hear that it's increasingly challenging for folks to adopt things like cover crops as you get into more semi-arid a type of environment and totally understand that and you know there are those that say well you know they could take up too much moisture they would impact the following crop and those types of things and I I guess I'm wondering how you've addressed that challenge do you perceive it's a real challenge or not for you in your operation to cope Oklahoma and if so how you kind of address it with your management of that cover crop and then the following crop yeah that that's always a big question you know how do you do it in that that environment I said well we're blessed if you go west of us they get half of what what I get so you know we're dry but it can be drier the thing about water and planting cover crops is you have to manage the system the way the system was designed so I can't plant the amount of species that he can plant in a 40 inch rainfall so I have to manage the population I also have to manage the the cover crop itself as in water use so I don't want to use a lot of corn in my mix because it's high water use so you've got to learn that the native Prairie that we had was set up to survive in that environment so you kind of need to look back and and try to best we can emulate what was happening it there so we have to watch what we plant we have to watch the population a lot of people at home want to talk about pounds and so our rule is if we get 20 inch rainfall we should not plant more than 20 pounds of cover crop but I'm more on population so that should be around 450 thousand seeds or something like that and manipulate that as as necessary so you have to watch that balance but once we've done that we saw all that we we were using water up front like I said earlier but as the rains do come our infiltration rates are higher and so we gain that back pretty quick and then once we get into the growing season a little bit further than we're water ahead in the end but you've got to watch that trend all through the year to really understand that so is it fair for me to say if you want to make it work you can make it work yeah in Oklahoma work pretty diverse I've got some guys in eastern Oklahoma then I that's in that rainfall area similar to yours that try to get rid of some water so they can plant so we plant high populations to help them you which I have trouble doing that because it's like come on I can't believe you're trying to get rid of water when I need ever drop I can but yes I've traveled from Montana to North Carolina and and it works everywhere if you watch the system and try to watch where you were in the beginning and try to get that in where you're at today so one of the things that I picked up between what Trey was describing what you're describing is that you're not just throwing cover crop seed out there and then wait until the spring you can come back for your main crop you are managing that cover crop it's a full-time management job and then trying to manage the rotation so we're trying not to plant the same crop on the same acre but every 40 year or fifth year and we're in wheat country I was born and raised a wheat farmer which you Peter was planting wheat grazing weight first and later plowing wheat ground and our rotation was we now we had a little bit we have a little dab of cotton that we were growing up in in wheat country so now when I'm planting rye that's not so popular in wheat country thanks a lot excellent well Trey any any other aspects kind of about the management of the cover crop I know you were talking about kind of getting it established but any other aspects of it that are kind of a one-minute challenge with I love what Jimmy said on the water management I found that a lot of the cover crop in the spring now that we're planting everything green is counterintuitive even assume that if it's a dry spring having that cover crop growing weed dry the ground out more and everyone around this assumes what they call for like a 10-day dry spell they go get your cover crops killed as fast as you can well I don't kill any of them we just let them go but we've actually found that the ground doesn't dry out any faster with stuff growing on it which goes completely against anything I would think now if it's extremely wet it definitely pulls the moisture out but what I considered is the cover crop is more of a natural system so it tends to keep things at what I call equilibrium it's probably not the right scientific term but it kind of keeps everything at equilibrium so is if it's green I can go out the same time guys are out plowing to dry the ground out I'm planting because the roots are there can I'll use I think Keith Burns said this the soil turns out like chocolate cake it's kind of the best explanation of it it really is malleable and you don't get the sidewall compaction you don't get the smearing that you do in a straight no-till system because the planner is able to work better but all that went counter to anything I thought would happen much the same as no-till holding more water than conventional conventional to me when you walk on it a spongy so it should hold more water but that's that's wrong so kind of rethinking and kind of recalibrating my mind to understand that things aren't always what they appear has really made a big difference yeah now Dan did I read right that you are also now kind of incorporating more crazy in your systems I know Jamie yes that's that we're starting to work on that we've had two generations of taking fences out and we live in a far lower if they do get out they're gonna go a long long way there's nothing this uh you know we look at cattle is just another tool in the toolbox you know there are mobile mower biological inoculate errs and we're gonna use them to accelerate somebody said earlier that you can use animals to accelerate soil improvement and we very much have seen that believe that to be true so it's just another tool in the toolbox to help us achieve our goals quicker you've given me all kinds of one-liners at the mobile more biological inoculator all right think also sweet cause that's the school yeah I guess I wanted to hear from each of you too if you could describe some of the kind of the benefits that you're seeing I don't know I heard a little bit of resiliency you to drought and stuff like that in there I'm just I would love to hear what your impressions are what what are your no you don't have to open up obviously your your bank accounts and show us what's in that but but you're all successful farmers so I would have to think as pence went out for you and but I want to see kind of what other benefits that you feel like that yours no kind of accruing in here in your farm and what's really gonna kind of contribute to the long lunge of it yet damn this doctors yeah so as it's been alluded to what we're really talking about here is trying to farm more nature's image and that the further down that path we go the better job we do it mimicking nature you know we start to need less inputs you know we see fewer weeds we're mineralizing more fertility naturally so we've got a by last for making less trips over the ground we don't need all the band-aids so we're saving a lot of money and then you know the question then becomes how do we how do we monetize soil health on the output side and so far we've been able to do that by raising Nagi Graeme's the demand for non-gmo is exploding and so we're getting more revenue that way in addition to the seed savings not having to buy all the traits to to cover up for our poor ergonomic practices and and I think the future you know today I heard a great presentation this summer that we have nanotechnology today that they can take a sense of the size of a small grain of sand and put it in your bloodstream it'll monitor your blood chemistry and it will call your cell phone and text you and let you know that hey Wayne you're gonna have a heart attack in 30 minutes you better get to the emergency so what we know about soil health and soil degradation is that our nutrient density and our food supply has has decreased as soil health has decreased over the last 50 years we're that close to having technology that will help us measure that nutrient density quickly efficiently timely and I think that the future is that people are going to be willing to pay for that and you can't unlike a lot of certification systems you can't cheat this system the only way you get that nutrient density is to have biologically active healthy functioning soils and so I think the future is very bright if you build it they will come sort of a if we if we get our soils functioning properly they're gonna be economic opportunities to profit from it I have to think that there needs to be some more research to verify a lot of that that's actually one of our goals one of our priorities in the Institute but it just makes sense that if you are building up slow organic matter so you can get greater proliferation of roots in the system than those roots and you get are more capable of taking up nutrients and water and that greater biological activity is going to cycle more nutrients too so it just makes sense you could get or nutrients a lot of the science is already there I mean these nutrient density measurements has taken place over time and it goes back to Sir Robert Howard I mean that was his observation healthy soil healthy plant healthy animal healthy people and maybe he didn't have the the science that we'd like to see to back that up but he had years and years of a little observations to back it up and as farmers you know if you want to be out on the edge you can't always wait for the scientists to catch us right yeah that's right we operate a lot on intuition and observation and it's great to have science to confirm that but you can't let it slow us down yeah am i turning red yet yeah I will admit that I used to try to farm and I wasn't very good at so I became design yeah so Trey Trey I want to kind of you know Dan related somewhat to the ecological aspects the environmental aspects of some of it too and and I know that you know I I don't envy you for farming and the Chesapeake Bay watershed which is probably a lot like farming under a microscope I would have to think and I would love to hear you know kind of your experiences in there because you're successful at doing that and I'm just kind of seeing you know what you know how you were managing that situation too because that's that's something I know increasingly across the u.s. farmers are more and more needing to work with um well it'd be a very long story but when I was a kid we didn't like the environmentalists the environmentalists didn't like us I think the big disconnect was that the environmental community didn't realize that when you tell the farmer he's not doing a good job you're not insulting his job you're insulting his family so farmers didn't become defensive they lash out we go into this independent thing where we're growing food you know we're doing what needs to be done for the world and we're not gonna listen to you because people were fighting and it was because people weren't handling each other right we weren't communicating well it's about 20 years ago the Chesapeake Bay Foundation had a big history of fish kill and in the Bay it was around 90 98 or 99 and the environmental groups and the farmers decided that they needed to work together so we had the board of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation which is our strongest environmental lobby in Maryland come out to the farm and tour the farm and talk to us it was primarily my father at that point and we kind of realized that we're all on the same page we all want a cleaner water we all wanted a better environment we all have children we don't have children growing up in the same environment and that was kind of the beginning of it and I would say it's probably been 20 or 25 years since then now it's grown to where in our little geography we work with the environmental community so I would say you should envy me because it's forced us to become better farmers we've been for socially to perform to society which i think is what everyone needs to adopt because that's what we need to do in order make the world better so now we work each River that we farm on we farm on four rivers each one has a different River keeper an organization that's a publicly run organization of which a lot of my landowners are parts of of which I'm I'm one of the board members the president of the board is a farmer as well and what we're doing is trying to come up with solutions trying to figure out how can we do better variable rate nitrogen can they get us some grant funding for that and it's it's something that if you told me this 25 years ago I thought you were crazy that I would be an environmentalist and I'd be sitting on the board of an environmental group and helping form the groups and then also being head of the AG committee where we're saying how can we help all farmers what can we do to make things better for the farmer so that they still make money and that's one of the main objectives and also in say in business be sustainable so now that we're doing the cover crops we're seeing him when we were just no-till doing waterways we're all doing our soil conservation stuff the bay kept getting dirtier or it was at least it maintained itself and it was very depressing for everybody because we were doing all this work putting in waterways ponds no-till nothing was changing we start growing cover crops and not everyone's playing the green I'm still a little bit of an anomaly there the bays getting cleaner so the water coming off for fields is cleaner we're now inviting a scientists in which we never would have before to put lights meters on the ground and measure what's the difference in nitrate leaching into the groundwater where we have crops where we don't whereas before we had always been scared of the answer you know we didn't want the answers environmentalist in want the answer because we all have based our livelihoods on the fact that we either didn't pollute or did pollute so getting our heads wrapped around the farmer being able to admit that we do pollute or the reality not in mission but just standing behind science that in order to grow corn we're gonna have some nitrogen breaks and some phosphorous breaks how do we minimize that mitigate it is different than you know having the environmental groups say you can't have any or say no or there's gonna be some it's a natural ecosystem the forest has brakes the Prairie have brakes you know there's always gonna be some but how do we get get it better and so I'd say it's an end evil place to be and the regulations haven't been bad we've fought them all tooth and nail we don't want our nutrient records public which is kind of a big fight now but we're still allowed to put on a sound amount of nitrous sound amount of phosphorus and potash is we can put on what we want so we're able to make a living my objective is to stay ahead of the rules up here as long as I've adopted practices on my farm that would be you know a year or two ahead of the rules then the adoption really isn't that big of an issue the guys that are still fighting the environmentalists and still think it's bad I have a feeling they'll probably get weeded out and those are the ones that you probably want to Mb but um oh no I don't view it as a negative but more as maybe neutral it's a lot of work and there's some headaches and it's a lot of social time and meeting time and things like that hang out at more environmental meetings than farmer meetings now it's so have these soil health promoting types of practices help you address those environmental concerns I think they have yeah and I think the collaborations been neat because you're meeting different people and dan and I were discussing before this that it's always exciting to have someone outside of Agriculture come into agriculture dan thinks of one of his advantages is that he took the time off in between school and farming I think it's what he said so I think that having these environmental folks you know if the problems on the table and they're looking at it on that side and we're looking at it on this side we're looking at each other but it's matter of figuring out how do we how do we come to a solution and I think that a lot of what they've done the reason we have a cover crop program in Maryland that's funded is not because the farmers ask for it it's because the environmental community asks for it but had me standing next to them and another former on the other side and all of us saying hey we're here together we're here state legislature we need funding for these programs that we can get cover crops initiated so the debate will get cleaner and now we're going to them and saying hey let's keep the funding source there because the bay is clean up you know this is what we wanted you know we need to counterbalance the influx of people that are constantly entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed so it's been it's um hasn't been bad before I keep going on questions are there any more questions that need to start filtering their way up through me to me if you all could maybe round them to rob you put the rod Meyers view on oh-oh-oh ask for a question not a dictionary oh alright we're good we'll get to it while I'm deciphering this if maybe Dan if you know you had an experience that I suspect and you're the only one in this room had an experience as an Eisenhower fellow in 2015 traveling around New Zealand and observing what those farmers ranchers are doing there and and I just have to think we would all benefit if you could just kind of give us some of the highlights of what you learned what you what you observed and what you brought back and you know maybe how you might have you know inserted some of that knowledge and into what you do to make your farm successful sure well the first thing I looked at why started the fellowship was where can I go to experience a year-round summer so that's why you know I had a son that went to college in Canada he said because they had this great program there but I musicals the drinking age was 18 this understand everybody's information it's summertime in New Zealand Australia in January in February no the the purpose of the proposal for the fellowship was to study the the social cultural and economic factors that lead people to adopt good saw health practices and and the reason why I thought in New Zealand Australia to be interesting is that back in the late 80s they eliminated all agricultural subsidies in both countries cold turkey and from an American perspective that could be a little frightening but I wanted to see what impact I had on how they farmed and so I spent almost three months traveling around and then most that time out on farms meeting farmers and talking to them about their practices and how they change in a few striking things one on the farms I was on 80% of them grow at least five different crops and that's borne out of the reality that they can't afford to put all their eggs in one basket there's gonna be no safety net there to pick them up and help them along if if they raise all corn and it all gets hailed or drought it out it fails so they have winter crop summer crops legumes grasses they've got all these different mixtures and that's that's one form of risk management that they employ in a world where they don't have someone else paying the tab when they fail also 80% of those farms have livestock and even though I found very few farms that were 100% no-till they all recognized that they didn't want to disturb the sell anymore and they had to but they compensated for that through diversity longer rotations and then having time under hoof that they knew they could repair that damage and overall they had a much healthier more resilient system they're forced to compete on a global stage so they can compete with anybody in the world I mean they're primarily export oriented agriculture and so I guess the the one thing that I want to bring Alma and and and you know we have a need in this country to move past our old-style thinking on on bag policy you know as everybody in this room is here today because they want to move agriculture forward that a more positive soil health path and what you have to understand is that farmers are not driven by science and knowledge we're driven by economics and that the current way we subsidize crop insurance distorts that message in is in fact the biggest impediment we face to change until we change that the needles not gonna move very far and and I know that's a scary prospect and and all these farms I was on I asked every farmer the same question would you if you had the opportunity like to go back to a subsidized agriculture and and there is not one person that wanted that they were all thought they were better off today than they had been the old system so I guess the message to the American farmer is that you know we'd be we'd be healthier and stronger without all that and don't be afraid Thanks I know tre you just returned from Europe didn't you yes you are join some farms over there any of those experiences you kind of feel like you're gonna bring back at your operation they weren't big on no-till everything was plowed well the soil health was a little different there that they but I felt like they had you know I'm trying to kind of rebrand now and I think ecological was a good word they used a lot more than probably I had in the past and that's encompassing the animals so and where we are Maryland there's a lot of hunting so we always add wildlife habitat you know we always have deer habitat migratory bird habitat habitat now we're starting to incorporate bees into it try to figure out how we can feed the bees but the cover crops so I think building a better system around it is good the one farmer I talked to was thinking about planting green I was showing him pictures and we were all excited and he said how do you kill it nice lob these paraquat or glyphosate means what we can use glyphosate for another two years he's like cuz it kills earthworms now think well you need to prove to him that there's a lot more earthworms in a no-till field that's been sprayed with glyphosate than a field that's been mobile or plowed so they're kind of the conversations were very similar to what we have here the food movement how to adapt and adopt and those sorts of things excellent so one of the questions that came in from the audience here and I throw this back to you trays it's kind of a definition of planting green I think we use that term and wanna make sure everybody's on common level of understanding you the field is completely green when you plant it the cover crops still standing whether it's this big in March or up to your chest in late May depending on when we plant and whether it's rye barley or wheat but the field is completely green if it's over 12 inches tall and corn we crimp it just to get it sunk down so we don't get shading and we usually spray post-civil plant and then spray that way we can make sure that we we don't move the soil and stuff with the trash whippers of you know so the chemicals don't get move similar to what we used to do in conventional so that's what green would be so the roots are still living nothing's been swell sometimes we spray to kill the broad leaves and leave the cereals and sometimes we do the opposite depending on the technique as we try to get things a little more complicated but that would be the definition of planting greens so what is kind of the benefit that you see for me it came from an agronomic perspective I kind of came in it from a different angle I think that most folks that are planting green for us it comes from the fact that it just plants better the soil is malleable so in no-till if it's wet you can't plant I'm buried type-a my father's Type A so if it's we want to be planting so if it's green it works much better as you open up the sidewall you don't get near the compaction from the disc openers as you go to close the trench you don't need near as much pressure so you can open it close the trench and higher levels of moisture in the soil so that you can get out there earlier and also plant wetter without getting the same compaction so it sounds like you're still accommodating kind of the needs of that that cover crop there or the main crop in this case you're just kind of a still accommodating it's nice for sunlight and everything that's how you're still managing that residue right okay yeah you know in addition to using that plant to solve a problem which in our case in the springtime is getting so moisture to where we can plant you know it's a different situation than Jimmy I mean we use they're too wet we're waiting on it to dry out the plant we can use of the plant to help do that the minute you kill the plant it becomes a detriment it makes it harder to dry it out so we're using that gravity in our favor the other thing is we're we're creating more seamless environment for our microbes you know we've got the living root there right up until we've started the next thing and so there's a there's no lost food source microbial yeah yeah and we've been playing with different chemical programs we find that if it's early and we're trying to protect the crop from frost like for planting earlier than we should be planting corn or by conventional wisdom we'll let it grow so like certain chemicals antagonize others still effective so we'll mix you know hydrazine with glyphosate makes the glyphosate take 20 more days to kill it but your eyes are getting a green root still in the ground does that plant struggling to die as the corn plant will be you know three or four inches tall before the cover crops actually dead so there's some things where we're trying to get this 365 day a year green Nisour roots growing at least we're trying to do it through you know some kind of unconventional ways I love that struggling to die GP you got some thoughts on that yeah one of the things that I don't want to talk a little bit about the crop insurance and in planting green in Oklahoma we're if you're gonna insure that crop you're not gonna be allowed to plant green so you're gonna have to have a bigger window at least a two-week window or more to do that so I chosen not to insure to get around that for my summer crops you know I'll still insure a little bit of a winter wheat one small with landlords and stuff but so that I planted green but for most producers in that in that area especially if the banks requiring crop insurance that's not going to be an option and so it's it's it's not always the same cookie across the country as other places so is it safe to say that some of these are biological issues management issues within some of them perhaps or policy issues family and so we've got to keep the eye on the ball of all hon ran would be proud Jimmy so another question that someone sent in was they would like to hear a little bit more about how you integrate livestock with cover crops do you mean well for us it wasn't is a natural because we're cattlemen I'm a trainee how we actually have them work acres of ranchland than we do a farmland so for our summer covers it was the perfect fit because in July and August that's when our grass is really starting to dry down and the performance it's getting worse so we have a great opportunity summer forges to to capture some of that and it's a good way to to generate some revenue and some beef back and give her a native range a break when it really needs it so it it can be ready for winter to do that we've done several things we've run cow calves on the cover crops through the summer to help our calves grow we've seen calves it's gained over three pounds three point eight pounds a day running on cover crops if their mothers we've seen a lot of two to three pound with yearlings in that time period that wane we could have a hundred degrees to 110 degree weather but if we got that cover crop that's as tall as my hat or taller then that soil temperature is relatively low at least 20 to 25 degrees cooler in the canopy than it would be in the bear sole and sometimes 30 degrees so that's a great opportunity for us to get them cattle in there and they really help the biology once we implemented cattle back into the and I say cattle this because I'm a cattleman it but all animals were it'd be like Gabe where's chickens turkeys pigs all animals would be good for the diversity but it really helps the biology in the underground world web that very few farmers and ranchers really understand it really comes alive and once again when we start seeing that then we can get away we're all non-gmo crops now we've reduced our inputs by 40 to 50 percent on chemicals and fertilizer that's just a start I think that would get better as we go remember that I start in a three tents to four tents organic matter yeah yeah wow I didn't know you could detect it you know that the gas gauge is passed red yeah yeah in flashing and and so some of that Seoul now we're at to one and a half to two and we've got a few fields worth we're approaching that three we can't get over that quite yet because our son is a lot more intense than then up north and so we burn up a lot more just growing and so it's it's an ongoing challenge but once we saw that turn around and start growing that organic matter by then that's when we saw that we could do away with our inputs GMO crops and spring we are grain sorghum in the last two years we've had no weed control chemically we've used rye and so we we've lowered that input out we've also been able to mop screen he passed because we put in pollinator strips we're in a good study with dr. Johnson longer this year on that we're we're sweet netting them pollinator strips to see what we're attracting see what we can help with that biology so all that system approach if we can get to that point that's when everything is we would say in Oklahoma get gets really clicking it really starts jiving that the mother nature syndrome kicks in and it's unbelievable what we doing great you know it's interesting you're you're talking about the influence of temperature and of course hotter it is or evaporate of loss so the moisture so now you're just going back into the atmosphere but and I've also heard you talk about its kind of the influence of that temperature on that microbial activity in soil tell us a little about what you've learned there well microbes are the underground livestock they're not a lot different from above-ground livestock for that matter us and for microbes 70 degrees is kind of agreed-upon optimum to achieve maximum microbial activity and every 10 degrees you go above it or below it they say you lose half your efficiency or half your work so contrast a soil that's covered versus uncovered in the summertime in July when a corn plants trying to fill or a wheat plant as trying to fill a head you know you've got a bare soil that's a hundred 110 up to 120 degrees you've effectively ceased all microbial activity and therefore the the ability of the soil to transform nutrients and feed that plant and a saw where you can maintain armor over the soil and keep that temperature down even in the 80s is a huge difference in your ability to continue to cycle nutrients and to provide the plant with everything it needs to stay healthy and to continue to achieve maximum yield I think Dan brings out a good point it you got to think about biology is life how many of you would want to work in a hundred and twenty degree atmosphere seventy degrees I can kind of get down with that so they're no different than we are when it's a hundred degrees we're trying to get out of the shade and work on a piece of equipment same way at the biology so we have to think of the biology below ground just like us it's all living and you're gonna fry if you keep it bare and they're not gonna work in there and they're working actually for free for us and so we just got to provide the atmosphere and you got to think just like that that you wouldn't work in that atmosphere why would we expect them to work we have a little bit more time I'm sorry that we do because that's such a great ending comment no I do want to tease this a little bit more than one of the questions that they're asked that every every one of you all could address this and this you know these are changes of systems changing biology and so you know that it can take some time for all the different components of those systems to kind of get in equilibrium with one another and so we recognize that there's change occurring and I guess that was really kind of nature of my question but if you want it to work maybe you can if you're just determined that it's not gonna work well then you're right it's not going to and I think there's kind of plenty of evidence here that what three gentlemen that really want to make it work are making it work but this is kind of a question of some of those challenges that they're wondering what your experiences are you finding any additional problems with slugs or mollusks that are you know eating your seed or newly emerged cash crops since you've been adopting cover crops and or no-till Dan yeah so we had in all years of no-till and even as we first started a cover crop we didn't have much slug issue to but along about that time it was decided an industry that we should be treating all our seeds with everything under the Sun including insecticides and at about two or three years after we started planting you know we'd been having treated corn for a long time of course but then you know we just started putting the treatment on the beans and in about a year two or three hundred I guess as when we first started to see slugs and and then the next year it got a lot worse and we started to scratch our head and and found research done in Pennsylvania Penn State where you know again so much of our ignorance of the biological you know we don't understand we do something with a specific intent not understand the unintended consequences in this case we thought we were protecting the soybean plant from insects later in the season and and why the seedlings emerging we didn't understand that we're killing the the best predator that worked on the slugs and so we read that report and we also saw quite a bit of data that would telling us that we weren't gaining an economic Vantage from this practice anyway so we pulled the we pulled the pulled the treatments and the slug pressure declined and we still have slugs but they're typically not a problem you might get a little pocket here and there but the problem got a lot better once we helped bring the ecological balance back into place by having the predator-prey relationship either one of you also have those issues I haven't tried what Dan's talking about which probably should cuz slugs are probably the Achilles heel to my entire program will lose all of my replant last year was due to slugs we didn't replant at corn we can manage them there's was a metaldehyde bullets some that we used suspended potash suspended fertilizers with salts can help but it's it's costly and it's hard to scalp for because of the fields green you pretty much have to walk the whole thing so our scouting has got really amped up over saving enough money to offset the scouting but slogans seem to be our biggest biggest problem they're the only thing we can't kill with chemicals I don't have the slugs and the vole problems but everyone everybody that I talked to about that it's the system is not right the the original system had all the Predators that took care in the balanced nature and what we've done is where we took out fences we took out animals we took out predators I visited one guy last year is having a terrible mold problem in in Dave brandt said said well okay do you have cows no I like to shoot the cows okay what uh Bobcats well we loved trapped Bobcats and he said and now you're wondering why you have voles then the natural predators and so the the ecosystem is so important you know we've been so focused for years and years and years in production agriculture of mono you know we want to raise corn or we want to raise wheat and we don't want anything left or right of that and that system is not the nature system and it's we've thrown so we've put all these seed treatments on our farm to we're trying to get everything by less inputs but it's more for the system I'd add you know on a car later that on bulls when we first started using a roller crimper we'd had terrible problems with bulls and we thought we'd solved it but we really didn't and we started cramping and rolling for a different reason but one of the things they've learned in the last two years is that that's been a very effective bolt control and we've also stopped shooting coyotes and we're we're going to work with pretty on a project you know barn owls a pair of breeding owls will kill sixty to eighty bowl tonight so trying to provide some housing for them and places to roost and bring back those populations but it's all about trying to restore the natural balance so that the system is self-regulating I was in Tennessee this this summer with Adam Daugherty some you NRCS guys know Adam and that they have some vole trouble in their county but where they've implemented animals back in they started noticing the bowls were going away and scientists would say well how could that be well when you get animals back in typically you have birds start coming back in to follow behind the animals and so natural predators and hawks and everything started coming back in so it's it's just more backup that the system will fix itself if you let up I have to wonder a little bit I'm gonna take a kind of a 90-degree turn little bit on what I've got here in my hand just on what you all are talking about because what I'm here is people that are really in tune to the land and really in tuned it you know you know you're low spots you're higher yielding spots you're lower yield even more challenging spots and and I guess I'm wondering of are you still walking your land still really being in tune to it or and I'm it's kind of wonder about deeper although it's very beneficial that additional challenge that new technologies of self-driving tractors and things like that you know and my my employer might are you are you are you trying to make sure that you achieve that balance is still being really into going on your land but while also adopting some these technologies anybody uh if I'm home there's hardly a day goes by that I don't walk at least five miles and a good part of that times across our land so that's something I enjoy and you learn things you see something different every day and and you know all the technology in the world doesn't really substitute for that close contact and you know and there's times when they get busy that I can't do it and I have to use a motorcycle or we drones or airplanes or whatever to to see things in real time as fast as they need to go but but I really enjoy that kind of a connection so it's really important to you to maintain that connection absolutely think so trait for me it's both I still do a lot of walking but we also utilize technology so I send out work orders through our software to every planner every scale and then I require everybody to take a picture so we have a picture of every time anybody goes to a field and then we get like a Facebook feed with everyone's pictures so we're kind of building intellect through the team because everyone on the team sees those same pictures so if I have a novice out there scouting and he sees worm he posts it says these worms are here I don't know what it is the other scallop operate on the same feed and said we're seeing them here but it's a cabbage larvae that's you know feeding on the the rapeseed instead of something that cetra mental so that's kind of helping educate everyone it's kind of a neat collective intelligence I call it where everybody's kind of getting educated as they roll through the feed and I'm required to do the same to the fields i scout I do the same thing so everybody is scouting planting spring we always have a visual image with that which has kind of helped me as we expand to get bigger and you lose the ability to walk every field every day to kind of use that technology to really stay in tune with things and then at the end of the year we've got to pull photography you know we're hitting the fields probably twice a week at a minimum especially where they're green you know we could go back said well this field didn't yield good what would the cover crop look like cuz no one remembers you know we've just been through a full fall harvest we don't think we're like if we knew what happened last week so the technology definitely helps breed the innovation so I'm here you all are always you're always students Jimmy yeah when we started grazing cover crops he was a big push back at headquarters from my wife and my one hired hand because Jimmy's here talking moving cattle dailies but the big issue the one is for what I really learn now that was getting out on the land and walking and in the serenity of listening to cattle graze and Jim Johnston's here probably from noble research he gets on to me for not being out with the cattle any because of my time so limited in in traveling and doing other things but that is the highlight of my day is to go out and move a poly wire and let's cattle into a new paddock or a new pasture and just listen some grazing and you could just think back when the Bison was roaming the Prairie and big herd coming along and and how peaceful that was and that's that's that's one of the greatest things and it really gets you in tune to it to what we've really missed out on and how we've really screwed the system up but by plowing and destroying what we really have so I'm hearing you say just I was getting ready to paraphrase it I don't know if I could do it any better than you just did it sounds like this this focus on this and management of what's going on in the soil is just also another avenue for for being really in tune oh yeah yeah our regeneration of our soul has really rejuvenated our life and our process of how we look at things early on we were just so focused on yield yield in in how we're gonna get the next technology and how how many more pounds of fertilizer can we push this in a rainfall and how are we going to pay the banknote and are we're going to be able to buy this place and do this and we're just so driven in that system that we're looking over the main components and and and once we got past that and really looked at a systems approach then things start to falling back in and and now we're still driven we still gotta have money we still like to buy some more land and and do all the things but we're not focused on we've got to make a hundred bushel wheat if we can make 70 bushels and be profitable we're content with that so I'm not driven to the point that I've got to be up at the top of production level I want to be a top of the profit level and so that's that's being in tune a little bit different than we've ever been I think what jimmies you know what I would call that approaches holistic management and it's it's it's it's managing the whole set of just focus on this piece or this piece of this piece and recognizing that it's all related that the water cycle and all these different factors you know the unintended consequences of our actions and being aware of all that how they play with each other yeah so I'm gonna take maybe just just slightly do it's all related because it's all a cycle as we are right where we're temporary stewards of the earth too and so I guess I'm wondering I'm trying to get to personal growth you here right on the camera go ahead in terms of kind of kind of what what you got going on in your family in terms of ending the farm down and what role that that has or has not played has not played in some of your kind of your decision is to you know to focus on those systems and on you know replenish and restoring soil health is that been in your mind work at all well one of the things that that we face is I talked about losing my dad to cancer and my mind oh it's kind of a complex deal I'll try to make this short but but my dad actually didn't die from cancer he died from radiation poisoning of ms-dos that really affected my son and so he went into the radiation field so that's left a little void because we only had one child but the system always works so I got a grandson now that is they call him little Jimmy I'm glad you got him a hat what a good dad he learns if he comes to the farm he's gonna have boots jeans and a hat that's and he's consumed much like I was in my younger years about the farm he he loves to go dig up earthworms and and I'm trying to focus him in on the biology side and so that's our our hope for the future but once again we want our children to be happy and we don't expect them to come to the farm if they don't want to come to the farm and so we're thinking down the road here you know how how we gonna make the transition I have a wonderful young individual Carson lab mobile workforce he's been with us for nine years he he just finished college last year when we helped a little bit with that and we're very proud of Carson and what he's done and he really understands the system now and so it's it's really really important that we share with our youth how agriculture can be and a lot of the the consumers and the people that's away from the farm or its third fourth fifth generation now that's a way really don't understand what agriculture is and how it works and how important it is and we sometimes get a bad rap but we allow that bad rap because we don't answer that need and we do a very poor job in agriculture of sharing our stories and I think if we share our story that they will understand that we really care for our soul and we really care for our land so as the next generation comes along maybe it doesn't have to be Owen my grandson to take over the farm I think there's some hope than that we've only got a couple more minutes and I want to finish with a different question be either one of you would like to respond to that too in terms of kind of how your management for like managing for soil health what role that you know kind of handing down in a next generation might play in it oh well I have three sons and I should say back up that part of our competitive strategy since I started this is to use soil health as a long-term way to build a competitive advantage that as we build our soils that that gives us an edge and I think the excitement over what we're doing and what we're seeing happen on the sole as as it's got my kids excited and if you'd asked me ten years ago will they come back for I said well maybe one possibly two and now all three of them are saying they want to it which creates challenges for that and you know it's not a birthright it's been explained that they understand there's certain things they have to do to earn the privilege but they all seem intent on that and the my oldest is in fact earned that and he's back on the farm full-time now so it's something I think about a lot and you know I I guess I roll is changing and in coming more of a mentor and a teacher and less of a doer perhaps but you know the rest of my life will be trying to to help them grab a hold of baton and go forward and yeah and you know the way we treat the land and a way to buy the land is the ethic that is non-negotiable but how they want to take that and and move it around is up to them yeah tre oh my kids are 10 and eight my son who's eight has spent the last four years trying to become a professional soccer player he's very intent on it he thinks gonna manage him in Barcelona when when he's 20 which I encourage so you know they don't really have any interest in farming but I kind of I think my transition to getting more holistic and more ecological whatever version we use comes when I had children you know just kind of living the light you know if I'm telling them what I'm doing I want to be able to explain to them what we're doing why we're doing it so as the kids would come out to the field be good what why are you doing that I don't sudden be like a wire be plowing why are we doing this and I think that was probably what led to the transition good we're about out of time but I want to just kind of ask each of you just kind of you know fairly briefly if you can just offer any advice for farmers ranchers that are in the room that that are interested in starting out or continuing you know to learn new things you know if you all have any thoughts on you know what any advice you might have in your experience Dana to start with you um a couple things I guess one is surround yourself with positive people positive role models positive mentors don't let negative people drag you down you're gonna have challenges you need to have a positive energy around you to help push you through those challenges and to really you know with what it's so exciting what you know what I understand today versus a year ago or two years ago about biology and how our management affects it is has come light-years and so I would have loved to understood what I do today even about soil biology when I started and I think it would have helped me succeed you know with a lot less bumps in the road so really think about how everything you do intended and unintended effects soil biology and if you can think through that process your odds of being successful are gonna be really good excellent excellent advice Trey I agree with Dan I think just to me it made farming fun again I would say my my late 20s early 30s I've become a logistics coordinator at a factory was basically I was doing because we were doing the same thing we were doing it and I really probably wasn't content I think we've all talked about enjoying our jobs and I don't think I was fully content because I didn't have the challenge it's it's it's kind of hard to explain but once I started getting into the biology and getting back into the soil I wanted a Jimmy going out with the cattle I just enjoy it a lot more and I enjoy the challenge from like a basics perspective if you're doing cover crop and you want to plant green start with beans they're a lot more forgiving than corn the majority of the money that I've lost in mistakes challenges opportunities whatever you want to call them they've all been in corn it's a lot it's a little funkier but if you're recording of being grower the beans are really easy and we've proven many times you know green versus brown or just growing a lot better beans and higher yielding beans and green which makes it really kind of a fun way to get into it you know if you screw up a whole cornfield and you don't grow as much corn it doesn't give me much energy to go do it the next year but if you can get a couple of wins and early it makes the season go a lot better Jimmy yeah I want to expand this a little bit on what Dan said and they may may or may not but all the partners that helped me I know some of them are here Willie's in the background NRCS Jim where you at right over Jim Jonsin noble research surround yourself with people and partners that that can help you that the the internet is your friend nowadays when I'm in the field I'm spraying I'm either listening to a podcast or a YouTube video or making a youtube video to share that's the important thing and if you're just starting out that's the key and you don't have to do it by yourself and there's no cookie cutter scenario that any three of us up here can tell you and I can't tell you what cover crops going to work on your place because it may be a 20 or 40 or 50 or of different rainfall or different heating days on and on and on and on but the Internet is a good partner but there's nothing that beats boots on the ground that that will help you identify and the Jimmy rule is three years that the and the first year is going to be crappy is the word I use and why is it crappy because the below my hat and in between my ears is not ready to learn how to look at the importance of the system the second year is going to be better the third year that's when the system's gonna start to turn a little bit and then the fourth and fifth year your your if you can get over the third year you're never going back and and just remember that that doesn't mean that there's not challenges in year four or five six or seven or fifteen there's always challenges but you have to stay the course and and when you see a problem or issue surround yourself with somebody that can help you through that and don't go to the coffee shop because that they're gonna say I told you it wouldn't work and you can't make that work here don't do that surround yourself with positive people that will say we can help you make that work well this has been really exciting we all please join me so is it okay if I offer up I had a few questions we didn't get to but if the folks that wrote those or didn't get to your questions please feel free to corner them you all be around the rest the conference today and tomorrow yeah I'm not seeing no so yeah now I have the pleasure before we move into something else for us introducing Sally look rocky dr. sally rockey she's the executive director of the foundation for food and agriculture research she's been in that position since September of 2015 so it's a relatively young organization before that she was a leader in federal research overseeing operations and extramural programs in both era culture and biomedicine she worked for USDA for 19 years and then for the National Institutes of Health she is a deputy director for extramural research leading groundbreaking initiatives and activities that will really have a long-lasting impact on the research community and she has her PhD in entomology from Ohio State University and that's insects and bugs and she was recently named a fellow of the entomological Society of America so would you please help me welcome dr. sally rockey [Applause] okay well thank you very much for that introduction dr. Honeycutt and I also want to thank the Howard G Buffett foundation and the Soil and Water Conservation Society for sponsoring this event and having you all here so I'm pleased to be with you this morning to make a special announcement of a significant milestone for farmers producers conservationists and anyone else who cares about soil health so I'd like to invite dr. Honeycutt back to the stage along with mr. Larry Clements from the Nature Conservancy Nick a gazer from the soil health partnership I'd also like to invite Lakeisha Odum who is our scientific program director from far and last as a surprise I'd love to have Rob Myers join us on the stage so we all know that soil health is such a critical component of productivity and a sustainable agricultural system in fact farming practices that improve soil health can increase profitability while protecting our vital natural resources like air and water and for all of our communities and but you what you all know is that we don't have a universally adopted way of measuring soil health in the United States and ultimately a lack of the standard has worked against us in many ways my foundation the foundation for food and agricultural research looks at ways to Risa to bridge research gaps and to put funding behind innovative research and help organize scientists producers and stakeholders to address challenges in the food and agricultural sciences so in just a few years of our existence we began about two years ago Farr has awarded over 40 grants to very innovative projects and worked with funding partners to invest more than 170 million dollars on cutting-edge science with more than 70 partners and the project we're announcing today is a great example of our model or model really is to bring partnership around these critical issues where we bring funding from the private sector along with funding from the public sector which forest part along with philanthropists and producers and others to spur this game-changing research so today I am proud to announce the second largest grip we've ever given it far but more importantly one of the largest single investments in soil health to be awarded with far the soil health Institute the soil health partnership and with Nature Conservancy and let me go down one slide so this is a project that will will be spurring innovation in soil health and accelerating the adoption of soil health management across the United States and across the globe far we'll be investing nine point four million dollars in this project we also have a match of a number of really wonderful partners that will be from General Mills Jeremy and Hannah Lord Grantham trust Midwest row crop collaborative Monsanto Nestle Purina petcare Company the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Walmart Foundation and the Walton family foundation all together we and other individual donors who we will together put around 20 million dollars on this project and this is really a game-changing for soil health United States that we will improve soil health and ultimately support the the positive economic and environmental outcomes for American farmers the project's collaborative research and education will accelerate adoption and benefits of soil health management systems nationally by offering a standardized measurement to evaluate and improve soil health by engaging farmers with on-farm research that's going to take our basic science and put it into practice with with on-farm research and to also work with non operator landowners to embrace soil health principles on behalf of Farr and our board of directors our project funders I congratulate the soil health Institute the soil health partnership and the Nature Conservancy on amazing opportunity I also want to thank Lakeisha Odom for bringing this over the the the finish line and also Rob Myers who has been with us from the very start two years ago working on this project please share the news around this announcement I'm so excited about the project of what is going to be the outcome we have a Twitter tag for this conference that you can share of course tag us at Foundation dot four and we would love to engage all of you there's many ways that you can get involved in this project so you can meet with with anyone on this stage to learn more about it and also please visit with me or my staff or others and about not only this project but about our organization so I want to congratulate again all of our wonderful partners and congratulate to you who your foundation our foundation is trying to work to make agriculture advance agriculture in every way possible so thanks again [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: SARE Outreach

Views: 21,336

Rating: 4.8693876 out of 5

Keywords: cover crop, cover crops, crop diversification, soil, soil quality, soil health, soil management, soil conservation, soybeans, corn, SARE, SARE Outreach, research and education, agriculture, sustainable, sustainable agriculture, farming, farm, research grants, ag, sustainable ag, organic, local food, USDA, stewardship, on farm research, farmer to farmer, livestock, organic matter, soil carbon

Id: S8pvXmrN2os

Length: 90min 32sec (5432 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 05 2018