Living Soil Film

[Music] you [Music] [Music] my friend I have been on a journey of husbandry I went primarily to see it firsthand conditions in the draft state I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested I shall never forget filled out the field of corn stunted earless stripped of Lee for what the son left the grasshopper talk [Music] no practice no blistering stunts no burning wind no grasshoppers are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stock men and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days and inspire us with their self-reliance their tenacity and their courage it was their fathers task to make home it is bear task to keep these home and it is our task to help them win their faith [Music] soil health is very important not only for farmers but for the consumer and the general public because we all like to eat and I don't think any of us are gonna volunteer to give that up any time soon there's just example after example of civilizations that that are declined has been a large part because they've ruined their soils they've left their soils erode the productivity of their country has washed away into the rivers and then they're no longer able to feed themselves and so from a social standpoint soil health is incredibly important in order just to sustain our ability to feed not only ourselves but to feed the world that's why it's really important for the continued productivity of this country not only for our generation but for future generations that importance and kind of leans over into what it's the public perception and I would say right now the public doesn't really have a good understanding the soil health and I could say that because I don't think a lot of farmers have a really good understanding of soil health regardless of whether you're organic or conventional or no-till or anything in between it all has to start with the soil even farmers that went to college and took a soil science class that's mainly all dealing with the physical and chemical properties of the soil hardly ever talked about the biological component and that's what is really missing from an proper understanding of soil health is how important the biology is [Music] the soil is a living organism if you think about a really healthy soil there's about 10,000 pounds of biological material below that soil surface everything from fungi to bacteria earthworms everything else in between and he told them all up that 10,000 pounds is about the same as two African elephants if you imagine two elephants it takes a lot to feed them so if you have that much biological activity below the soil surface it's gonna take a lot to feed those as well [Music] from now until 2060 we're gonna have to produce as much food as we've produced in the last 500 years what we eat other than what comes out of the oceans is all derived from soil soil security is equal to food security so if we want to make sure that we can feed the world's population we're gonna have to understand how do we make sure that our soil has the capability of producing these crops O'Keefe burns the president and co-owner of green cover seat here in Bladen Nebraska : it along with my brother Brian we've been farming here all of our lives and this land we intend to be able to hand down to our children and grandchildren and so so health has always been something that's I guess been important to us but probably only since about 2008 have we really you know consciously been making efforts to really drastically improve it the atmosphere around us to 78% nitrogen but it's unavailable to plant so this legume plant can't actually take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and utilize it but what it can do is it can host a very specific type of bacteria on its roots that's actually colonies of Rhizobium bacteria that are able to take the atmospheric nitrogen convert it into forms of nitrogen that a plant can use and they basically will then sell it or trade it to this plant in exchange for carbon plants through photosynthesis produce the carbon so what we see going on here is a very complex economy going on within the soil where plants are using carbon as a currency to purchase goods and services from the bacteria from the fungus and the soil really from all of the biology but in this case they're purchasing nitrogen from these bacteria in exchange for the carbon and that's the whole key to this soil health system it's really all about the carbon so carbon umekes is a term that hopefully we'll get people thinking in an economic frame of mind but using carbon as the currency and if we could get farmers to think in terms of carbon or at least understand that carbon is even more important than nitrogen then the only way to get carbon into the soil is to have a growing plant you got to have photosynthesis if I want more carbon I have to have plants growing more often so I can't just have corn and soybeans growing from May through September I've got to have a cover crop growing from October through April and that's where I get the big extra boost of carbon into my system I've seen great soil health and both organic and conventional settings I've seen terrible soil health in both conventional and organic settings really it comes down to the management practices and and how the farmer is gonna integrate the principles of soil health into their operation cover crops are simply crops planted between your cash crops that are rarely planted to be harvested necessarily they're just there to try to put carbon back in the soil to utilize sunlight during times year that our cash crops are not to protect the soil you know by providing a living cover to shield the soil from erosion soil is a living breathing system sometimes we have to feed it a little for it to feed us and it's like a relationship if you're in a relationship where all you do is take take taking you take the maximum you can at every opportunity where the odds of that relationship lasting very long [Music] I'm very very cautious and conscientious about working the soil not working it too much trying to put as much organic matter back into the soils through cover cropping as I can my philosophy is that if I take care of the soils the soils are gonna take care of the vegetables so I do a lot of cover cropping on the farm on bare ground if at all possible I have cover crops on it I do a lot of cover cropping inter planting with crops to like bring in beneficial insects I use a lot of mulch like as you can see all the straw that's in between the beds there's a lot of different components that are involved in creating and maintaining healthy soils from out here are you done now we're gonna do the Pok choy next and it's out and feel the e massive heads of lettuce under there up and here we go holy moly they are so gorgeous oh my gosh the heads that you would see at the grocery store are half this size we're gonna harvest a lot of them this is my seventh year of farming I had a ton to learn I mean I didn't know anything about farming and raising produce and soil health and and I still feel like I still do have a ton to learn the CSA model of farming is why I started farming and it's what made me passion about farming the stands for Community Supported Agriculture so I have members that pay up at the beginning of the year they pay an upfront fee in exchange for their income to support the farm my guarantee is that for 24 weeks the spring summer and fall season that I will provide seven to nine different items in their CSA share that they get every week people are starting to care about and think about where their food is coming from and care about the connection between the person that's growing the food and the food that they're eating I look at it as a responsibility for me to try to educate my CSA members you have to start with the big picture before you get into the minutiae of soil health you can't start with why it is that I plant cover crops and the goals that I'm trying to get out of cover cropping have to start with this gorgeously beautiful Swiss chard that I bring to the farmers market and they look at it go ho my god how did you do that I just I know that cover cropping is helping to benefit the soils but it's not something that you're gonna see in a year or two building soil is not something that happens quickly it takes a long time I mean when you think about when the glaciers came down like hundreds and hundreds of years ago that's why we have the soils that we have we're a certified organic vegetable farm the whole farm is certified but I'm growing vegetables on about seven acres if you have a lot of land you can take an entire field out of vegetable production and just have it in a cover crop or a couple of cover crops for the year and then next year planted vegetables I don't have that much land so for me it's really tricky moving things around so I do a lot of intercropping one of the most common intercropping things that I do is with a fall Brassica crop I put buckwheat in the pathways and buckwheat when it flowers brings in a parasitic wasp and that wasp feeds on a Fitz and aphids are about the biggest pest on fall Brassica crops I'm doing a lot of sort of IPM pest control on the cash crop that I'm growing just by planting this buckwheat that's kind of in between the pathways [Music] my dad started with five acres and we built from there he built up to sixty acres when he was alive and then I built it up to 120 since he passed away he's a great farmer for his time but in his time the field men would come out from the canneries he said you need to spray this you spray this on this time even if there was bugs present you know harmful bugs present or not you had to do it that's totally changed now there are field agents out there now with corporations that really understand that there are other methods of controlling the bad bugs using good bugs etc and so I think that's been a really major shift over the past I'd say 20 years which is really beneficial to the consumer that message in my opinion has got to come from the farmers right to the general public and that's what we try to do to our farm stands is is inform them of how we do things and why we do it and and to let them know that the food that we provide them is very very safe a part of the job of a farmer that that sells directly to the public is changing public perception or correcting public perception as to what farmers really do by and large most of farmers understand that that soil health is critical to their business the saying that I like to use is I'm not really treating the plant I'm treating the soil if you treat the soil right and take care of the soil your crops will come our model is 40 different crops we're always rotating crops around and like I only like to put crops in one patch of soil for three years and then I automatically rotate it out whether it's berries vegetables or whatever we plant different varieties of cover crops you know what's going to be the the succeeding crop coming up for instance we raise a lot of corn and it takes a lot of nitrogen so in fields that are going to be going into corn the preceding year then we go ahead and implant an Austrian pea in there which will fix its own nitrogen so we have our strong good nitrogen source in the soil prior to planting and seeding the corn crop and we can really reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers and also just makes the soil much healthier very expensive seed cost but now when you take it the full length of the year and look at the fact that that Austrian bee is actually adding 40 to 50 pounds of nitrogen then you got to figure out what's that saving me in fertilizer costs well corn takes about a hundred and twenty pounds per acre of nitrogen to really get it to full production and a full crop so I'm cutting my fertilizer bank in half so I'm only using half the amount of fertilizer that I normally need to use then suddenly Austrian Pete isn't so expensive there's a value in that but there's another value in that is less time for me in the field making sure fertilizers being applied at the appropriate time because it's just there already and then in other parts of soil that like came out of corn or came out of Berry's where there's excess nitrogen already in the soil we'll plant more of a cereal rye variety cover crop because that's a really good absorbing and holding nitrogen in the plant during the winter time and then we can we can plow that under in the springtime before planting other crops I keep my farm stand open pretty much year-round and keep feeding different crops into that and then that builds my customer base and one more people come by I think we need large corporate farms to feed America but I think we feed society with farms like mine [Music] a farm is a business so yield matters and productivity matters and I fully believe in sitting up here today because I believe that soil health is good is crucial to productivity short and long-term I think there's a deeply engaged set of consumers that is growing it's a consumer base that's growing and I think what they're trying to tell us as a big food company is that food isn't a zero-sum game as I think about what I heard today I was blown away by the amount of science and I know that the science has been there and the research is good but I was really impressed and then came this talk of how do we link the science what we know to creating the economic models that give producers a chance to move forward with some level of confidence that has to happen food alone is not going to drive this and I just use the corn crop as an example we grow about 15 billion bushels of corn in this country five of it goes in your gas tank five of it goes into cows two of it goes on ships to somewhere else you put two of it in the grain bins I think that leaves us with one food seed residual we're not using a billion bushels of corn to make cereal and tortillas in this country so if you think about who plays and who benefits from soil health we all benefit [Music] we're an urban farm in the Dutch town neighborhood of st. Louis we are seven miles south of the arch as the crow flies we have about 70 to 80 varieties of cut flowers that we grow during our season we're farmer florists so that means we grow the flowers here and then we design the arrangements for things like weddings funerals parties all that kind of stuff this is really unusual to have an acre city farm in the heart of st. Louis we're just wanting to be good stewards of the land we wouldn't want to be doing anything else that's why we bought this property because up the street they wanted to turn this into a parking lot when a house is a proofreader demolition they don't take away everything right they put it into the basement into the foundation and then they cover it up with maybe a foot of fill dirt definitely not topsoil right so when we acquire these properties that had houses on them and we're demolished there's no way to tell it's full of rubble and bricks and the soil quality is really low we're just talking fill dirt like Missouri clay yuck EW yuck yuck so what we do is we bring in some soils sometimes instead of trying to tell n we're building up soil health is really vitally important here on our urban farm even though we're just on an acre we're pretty committed to taking crops out of production and and replenishing the land with cover crops so in the back what we have are the daikon radishes which run deep into the soil to penetrate and break up any hard pans the cover crops are also important to help prevent erosion because especially on the purchase Lots we have to buy that soil you know so we want to hold onto it as much as we can we do our soil testing yearly in each year it provides us new information and we just tweak it a little bit more with organic farming you just kind of get in this mode of like more compost more compost right just keep adding compost and we were doing that and then our soil test would come back with really high phosphorus right which can happen from just adding tons of compost it's really hard on me because I'm really tempted to add compost every fall but you know it really improved the soil I mean it was amazing right he's amazing this bed last year we had terrible problems with it so that was from the trucked in soil that we had purchased from an area company it was so low in nitrogen coming to us that you know we had to compost and we every thought we'd be good to go the entire area failed that's when we had to be more proactive about how we're taking care of our soil for me it's so important you know I mean just think about it whenever you get someone a bouquet the first thing they do is what they put their face in it right I mean they put their face in at the smell of flowers so if you're doing that act of love why not go that extra step and making sure that it's the healthiest thing that they can possibly buy on the face of the earth people who are really into growing sustainably and holistically are passionate and that's what you should be looking for a farmer who's excited about what they're doing and what they're growing remember the lessons of the Dust Bowl that those images haunt us we want to keep the soil in place we want to take care of this earth and keep it moving after we're long gone [Music] I think people really are starting to be aware that something is wrong with our environment with the planet with with where we're living and if we don't start taking care of it now it's just not gonna get any better one vote from Teddy Roosevelt that challenges each of us to think about our actions and the commitment to soil health now and into the future if in a given community unchecked popular rule means unlimited waste and destruction of the natural resources soil fertility water power force game wildlife generally which by right belong as much to subsequent generations as to the present generation then it is sure proof that the present generation is not yet really fit for self-control it's not yet really fit to exercise the high and responsible privilege of a rule which shall be both by the people and for the people the term for the people must always include the people unborn as well as the people now alive or the democratic ideal is not realized we're the fourth generation on this farm my kids and my brothers kids could be the fifth generation it's been in our family for well over 100 years we're all very much attached to the land one thing we've noticed through soil testing is that over the years our more organic matter got drastically low less than 2% and and so when you start reaching those particular levels you just don't have the water holding capacity that the ground really needs to have and so we made the decision really is about five six years ago and talking with my brother that we really needed to do something different we made that conscious decision to really get into cover crops and really start building this organic matter back first two years we had drought and it really didn't take well for us third year we hit a homerun with it and that kind of solidified in our mind that we really needed to continue with this we consistently see better yields with crops in that area and it's just really it's a function of the rye grass with its root structure and if it's water holding capacity because we have had the dry years through here but then also we've seen just you know better water absorption during when we do have those moments of heavy downpours one of the things that we're learning more and more to how to do is become better observers our forefathers were we're great observation as they had PhDs and it was fast times that we have today we early don't take the time to notice changes in the environment and I think we're seeing a lot more because we're taking more time to observe what's really going on around us [Music] you you [Music] but a lot of people call the microbes sort of the black box it's it's the unknown territory and there's so little that we know but we understand that there are very important in soil ecology most people can count up to 150 in about 30 seconds so if you were to sit down and try to count all the microorganisms in this tablespoon of soil without stopping and having absolutely no brakes it would take you about six and a half years people know that legumes are nitrogen fixing plans but what they don't always know is that it's really the microbes that are associating with the legumes that are doing the nitrogen fixation without the microbes the plants aren't going to be be healthy and so just understanding that link between the microbial community and the plant is something most people aren't aware of we think of the DNA of the soil microorganisms as their genetic potential because they have the potential doesn't mean that they're performing that function so an analogy would be just because you have a bicycle doesn't mean that you're riding it and it's the same thing with soil microorganisms they have the genetic potential through their DNA to perform a certain function but they may or may not be doing that and so we need to find methods that focus on what the microorganisms are actually doing in the soil [Music] we have a lot of risks in terms of our food supply and and making sure that we manage all of that and keep it sustainably moving forward by regenerating the soils that are having issues right now is so critically important every producer every every rancher every farmer out there is ultimately a livestock grower now whether you know that or you don't you've got livestock they're just microscopic and that's what keeps our system moving producing functioning as that vital living ecosystem to provide everything that we need as a human race in order to survive hello oh my pleasure you may tell me what temperature microbes really like where they at their peak efficiency long ago enemy majors we need to adjust the curriculum in sounds like 75 degrees they're just like us when it gets colder or hotter they start to slow down and get lazy and not want to work so anybody tell me what the temperature is likely to be in a bare soil tillage system it's not uncommon to see that get up over a hundred degrees what happens to microbial activity at that point done on vacation not doing anything what is the temperature in that same field if we've got a ride back down we can gain 20 to 30 degrees and retain our moisture and eliminate evaporative loss by having that that mulch barrier they're reusing these complex cover crop cocktails mixtures of three to 13 different plants now like having a good party when you have a party you just invite all the dudes over that you know or is it funner when the girls come and maybe they bring some of their friends and maybe get some international students to come and also now you've got a pretty fun party right that's a lot better than you and the guys sitting around watching Monday Night Football yes well these cocktails are kind of the same thing the more things we put in there the better it gets most of the problems that plague modern agriculture are really a result of a lack of diversity patriot bores a monochrome nowhere in nature do you see a model come we're imposing our will on nature and her response that over time as things like resistant weeds and bugs and disease and then so forth when we start to bring the diversity back it's incredible how quickly a lot of these problems go away [Music] so our goal when we farm is we never want to see the soil unless we go looking for it we think this is beautiful right here we've got all of this straw left over from the triticale crop that was harvested back in July so in addition to this great thatch of cover that we have with this triticale residue we planted these sunflowers in here along with with the cover crop so this is kind of a dual-purpose we're gonna harvest the sunflowers for a cash crop I've got cow peas growing in here Austrian winter peas flax we have buckwheat we've got squash there's about 10 different companion cover crops and growing right with the sunflowers and that's what's giving me additional soil benefits through the great diversity that I have because I get the best of both worlds and it's kind of like having your cake and eating it too you know I've got the cake with the sunflowers and I'm gonna harvest but I'm eating the cake too because I've got all of the benefits of the diversity growing down underneath it and just from the way this this field looks I think this cake is gonna taste pretty good for the farmer who's willing to put the effort into finding the markets making the markets or hauling to the markets there's huge potential in doing this type of system because I guarantee you this will add you know 15 to 20 bushels on my corn yield next year because of all the great diversity that I had here versus just being a corn soybean rotation 3 cash crops in two years plus eight or ten cover crops during the same time period really is going to help the soil health score on on this particular farm here look and see look at this here's part of our insect control mm-hmm I salute a couple yeah man you know that's like there's I wish I had more of the spiders cuz there she puts the left of a grasshopper if I had more of those I'd have less of this yeah so the more spiders we can have the better off we are as long as they're not in my house because my wife doesn't like [Music] we have a big family my wife and I we have we have seven children next generation is coming there's a bunch of grandkids running around now so when we make farming decisions we we definitely think about what's this gonna do for the future because we want to be able to turn the land over to them in in really good condition but at the same time you have to make money you know there's a lot a lot of families to support through through the farm and through the seed business so we also have to make decisions that are economically sound then do you any good if you have the healthiest soil in the world if you go broke doing it living cover crop has made our soils healthier we didn't do this based on building soil health we did it on building yield so we could become more economically viable then that effect is that the soil appears healthier we like no-till what that allows us to do is have a better paid fewer employees a better job reusing less fuel relying less equipment so no-till we've always figured was kind of the answer that's the best way to farm we seed the cover crop like a crop now so we're trying to get it nice and even and what that's doing is allowing our corn to come up nice and even so that we get to even air sizes we don't get the runts and all that stuff that we used to get that we're often associated with with a typical no-till scenario consistency is what it's all about that's the hard part is trying to get this field consistent what we were doing is spraying her fields as early as we could we'd kill them off we couldn't yield with our conventionally tilled fields in high yielding environments under a gravelly field low organic matter field the yields would be comparable but we could never beat it with no-till now that we're planting green and getting the stability in our soils now we're finally starting to kind of bridge that gap of no-till versus conventional so I think that what we're doing is kind of combining technology chemicals you know kind of this commercial style of family farming and then incorporating that with utilizing a lot of what the the organic folks have learned over the years and what people used to do 50 years ago and kind of taking that to the next level so in this field we were harvesting the corn and then running the air cedar right behind it so that the idea is to always have something growing you can still see a little bit of green in these plants so they were alive just not too long ago I'm standing right in the middle of between what's been planted and what hasn't been planted on this side we just harvested but we have not drilled and on this side we have drilled and you can barely tell the difference the stalks are are knocked down a little bit but the whole idea of no-till is to leave all the residue on top we use an air cedar a drill that has a single disc opener so that it does not disturb any soil so as you can see there's there's very little soil disturbance and and that helps protect the soil it helps with water infiltration keeping that residue on top of the ground you can tell really healthy soil by the insects by worms and then just you want that soil to almost look like chocolate cake and this this has got good moisture we've had good moisture here in the last couple weeks so the our cover crop should come up real well right here's where one of the slots from the drill is and you can barely tell that it's there which is what we want to help give a little more Armour to the soil in the last hundred years we've oxidized over half our organic matter into the atmosphere primarily through tillage we've lost half of the the basic building block that makes so productive half of it's gone and we haven't been at this very long in the terms of the life of us all I mean in Indiana maybe we've been telling us all to some degree for 200 years and we've been doing it intensively for the last 50 project what will happen if we continue that the good news here though is that there are so many win-win winds very seldom in life do we find win-win-win scenarios truly so when we quit telling when we build our organic when our production goes up our costs go down we clean up the rivers lakes oceans would keep the off-site pollution problems from happening I mean all these things come together those are the reasons why we want to do it my goal personally is before I've become part of the earth again I would like to see our organic matters be what there were before man came along and I think if if I'm fortunate enough to get another 15 or 20 years I think we can do that we've documented now that with what were we been doing we can add about a percent every five years and I think if we bring grazing into the equation and more multi species type cocktails to graze them on and so forth that we can improve even that ah we're in the process of expanding our livestock operation we've got about 40 cows we hope to be up to a couple hundred within three years when we run cattle on the ground it really increases the soil health much quicker than when there's no livestock involved the trampoline effect the the biting and the chewing of the plants the plants react differently when they being grazed versus when they're just being cut like with a mower and they'll regrow more aggressively the integration of all of the saliva and the dung and the urine those all are increasing the biological activity of the soil and we see much faster gains in soil health when we properly integrate the livestock the holy grail of soil health has always been can we do organic no-till you know because that's the best of both worlds we don't have to do any tillage but we also don't have to use any any chemicals it's really really hard to do because you're growing this cover crop which we need to build up the soil and somehow we have to kill it and without chemicals or without tillage then what are your options so the options are number one you can use a roller crimper or you can try to smash that plant and to really damage that stem so that the plant goes ahead and dies we want to get it knocked to the ground so the sunlight can hit those young corn plants when they come up or you can use cattle and either one of them the timing is exceptionally critical if you're gonna really get a good kill on that cover crop it's a completely different mindset of how you run livestock you you don't just turn them out to pasture check them once a week and then at the end of the summer you round them up and you know you bring them home it's it's being out there every day moving them every day so we've had we have a lot of work to do I'm figuring out some of the infrastructure of being able to make that work well but we're convinced that it's the way to go [Music] managing for a group saw health probably has one of the most profound impacts on society that we've had in agriculture in a long time no farmer wants to lose their nutrients they don't no farmer wants their soil to become degraded however there's a huge demand on our agricultural system from the globe actually and there's going to continue to be a huge demand I've worked for the USDA now for 35 years and never have I seen among farmers such a broad quest for knowledge as I'm seeing now farmers willing to share their best-kept secrets with other farmers is a very very refreshing part of this job [Music] you wouldn't find that in many businesses across this country [Music] a wish that I would have is that more farmers would pay attention to their bare ground my steeper ground over here my marionberry ground is a permanent cover crop in it and we never take it out ever it stays there our farm is uniquely situated on two watersheds we're sitting right now at the crest of my farm to the north over here heading north is the Johnson Creek watershed which feeds into Johnson Creek the Willamette River and eventually the Columbia River and then to the south on the opposite side that watershed goes into annoy your Creek nor your Creek actually starts here at my farm and then that dumps in the Clackamas River drainage that too is a very productive salmon and especially steelhead run up in there and so we'll be aware of that no--you're Creek again the headwaters right here at the farm it's under investigation right now by the EPA what they've found is is high levels of fertilizers and pesticides in it they now know that the problem is farther down in other areas that you don't have cover crop strategies cover crop strategies that we use in the permanent cover crops and the steeper slopes over here I bought my farm has kept everything right here in place let's be concerned about the soil making sure it stays put as much as we can possibly because if without the soil we don't have food there just won't be any and so we all got to be concerned about soil health quality of it and the depth of it like I said before you don't feed the plants you feed the soil well that's true in every aspect whether you're a home gardener and using compost or whether you're don't have a home guard you just have a yard watch how you treat your yard make sure you don't have runoff leaving your property that's pretty key to stop the oil erosion and runoff into the bays and estuaries and things like that so it's critical for all of us we think about soil health and keep it in place [Music] you [Music] Emma Stone a personal Vienna desde que era near-ir Mako mr. 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Wallace cultivar my is pero el mismo tiempo cultivar one free whole squash en el mismo tiempo en el mismo train Oh si si ah muy bien was carousel free whole whole original free water producing it rocking que hacen squash squash didn't arise is the funda aggressive focus here and squash diarrhea and swallow for a kilometer army [ __ ] en todas las Tres culturas attila ceramic or el agua in accuse tiempos used hablando de los años placing cuentas CSCS Waya in aquel tiempo los Serbian AOS / rotten en la manera de demostrar lo our odd the name was the nothing only hackle open was the most rad we really see the good benefits that the coca crops has year after year we form around 4000 acres that's about one tear of the farm we have permanent crops like almonds and pistachios then other to tears with row crops that we grow fresh market tomatoes fresh garlic right now like see you see California sunny and everything but this is assemble so far you know we don't have no rain at all usually we have one or two showers that's right right this area right here we are more or less like a desert we are wish about about six inches of rain every year in these soils that we have cover crops and everything the rain stays in the soil doesn't run out like used to run years ago because the cover crafts protect the soil few years back I got invited to go to the White House I got honored because the soil helped and changing you know climate change and agriculture to as tough change but the neighbors see that is beneficial and that's why you see more and more farmers using cover crops [Music] I've been working in the AG industry all my life I've launched new products into new market segments like many of you but I've never been part of helping to create a whole new segment of life science that spans the complete biome from life below the ground to the life above the ground the development of something of this magnitude requires leadership from all ends of the spectrum in order to Shepherd the understanding and the acceptance of new information and technology this information and technology over time will completely transform the agricultural industry it's going to transform the entire agricultural industry and it's already happening as I speak the health of our soil and the caretakers of our soil will be the topic of national debate and the focus of concerned and active consumers because we know that as many continued to reawaken the public that the answer to many of the serious issues we currently face as society climate adaptation safe and affordable food and clean water all begins in depends on the health of the soil farmers in Maryland are by foreign way the most highly cover cropped in the country but most of it is because of the state cost share program I think the reason Maryland has such a strong cover crop program in a lot of ways is based on the collaboration of the environmental community with the farming community and part of the the whole history of Harborview has to do with collaborating with the environmental community not just Harborview but the farmers in the community around us particularly in the northeast portion of the state as well as the state as a whole it started about 20 years ago was kind of the big when everything kind of hit the fan so to speak between farmers environmentalists we had a posterior outbreak and the Chesapeake Bay and we had a huge fish kill the problem in the water clearly starts on the land the science around and determined that they thought it was from the phosphorus running off the fields of the farmers at that point we were kind of at an impasse we're gonna fight or we're gonna come together when you battle you don't really tend to accomplish things so at that point I think we kind of started to collaborate and the bay foundation said well what what can we do to help you so you know what what do we how do we change we're doing the same thing we've done for 20 years we don't think there's anything wrong with it so what would what can be done you know what is there so then they determined that cover crops were kind of the answer if you do cover crops and you pull the nutrients up out of the soil in the fall when the soil is still alive and you get most your infiltration you've got a little bit of excess nitrogen there you've got a little bit of phosphorus there you pull it up then you don't get it into the waterways and into the groundwater so it's pretty simple you know it's pretty easy to understand but farmers said well we're not gonna do cover crops you know we don't have enough money you know the farming stuff you know it's the the early nineties you know we didn't have $6 corn I mean you know it was tough we're not gonna spend an extra money so what if we get cost share for it you had the farm bureau and the environmental groups both going to the state legislature saying hey we need this we have also appropriated two million dollars emergency funds for state only program to help Maryland farmers with a winter cover crop our solution is going to be on the land and it's not going to be an easy solution we're gonna have to take decisive action I believe it will be expensive I believe it's gonna take some political courage for us to require what must be done through that collaboration we were able to get dedicated funding to pay us to do cover crops the program's been going on for 20 years but there's a some very good groups of environmental community and there are some very good groups of the farm community that have managed to to really work this thing out and actually make a difference in the water system we're very very proud of the farmers in this state and what they've been able to accomplish it's just remarkable one of the things that most people may not know about some of the people that work at the Maryland part of Agriculture is we are farmers I myself am a farmer me and my husband 10 about 75 to 100 acres I've been with the Department of Agriculture for 17 years and of those 17 years I've been with the cover crop program for about 11 to 12 hour base payment for cover crop is 45 dollars an acre they can plant it areally they can plant it using a no-till planner they can do a conventional where the ground is disc and then seated they can also do a process where they spread the seed with a spin spreader and then go in and disc behind it we've tried to look at all the different options that the farmer already uses so that we're not putting him at a disadvantage for how to get the cover crop planted we offer incentives for different species when we started adding the additional incentives and prioritizing certain best management practices the program has just grown it's grown considerably just in the last five years right now our actual budget is over 20 million dollars a year for the cover crop program and and that comes from different sources Chesapeake Bay restoration fund and that sort of thing because that's one of our primary goals is protecting the bay [Music] the bae means a lot to marilyn not just as a benefit for water quality but I mean there's tourism recreation food one of the main things is just a quality of life I mean it's it's amazing to live where we live to have the bay on one side of the shore and the ocean on the other so we're very fortunate in that respect [Music] [Music] it's significant for me as a farmer to realize that all around his island there is literally water that could have ran off my farm Hey couple years yes this result oh yeah I'm just curious just wondering we've spent all the last 20 years or so I mean I personally be using cover crops and trying to keep my soul from eroding and trying to keep the nutrients and the lands particularly the nitrate so they don't get into the Chesapeake Bay and and disrupt everything there are you seeing any changes over the last 5 10 15 years is it getting better I believe I believe the bay is healthier than it has been I can see an improvement I mean yep sea grasses are increasing now this year's are late because of the current weather about sea grasses are increasing ok the blue crab population is doing well and so we're so already oysters the bay looks healthier than it's been in five or six years Wow boy that's Israeli in Korea it is there has been a huge effort and I think it's well known at the Chesapeake Bay has been kind of like a pilot project nation yeah right and we know that there's everyone lives in a watershed yeah and if we're starting to see some success here that is definitely and a good sign that we're headed in the right track yeah yeah so when it was will say the worst eight to ten years ago were the people getting out of the business yeah people were leaving to business and they just couldn't make a living at it I'll remember when you would go out oystering and working pretty much to fold the fold time period like 2 to 2 p.m. from sunrise at 2 p.m. you would you could only catch three or four bushels of oysters of course you know Auster's and crabs is what keeps the ball roll in there I mean that's what we're about it's like corn inside that's how we put food on the table that's how we put kids our kids through college and and it takes a lot of oysters and crabs to put kids through colleges hello how many square miles is this island of course it's mostly marshland but Tangiers about maybe a mile walled by two and a half to three miles okay not very big you have mentioned there's three ridges three meters that's how high are these ridges the highest point is probably about four feet above sea level so what do you say is the rate of water and perching the island per year I varies but like like here we probably lost probably ten feet since last last fall and like I say you can see how close she's getting you really don't have ya have the land to give up are you optimistic about the future I am optimistic yeah I'll tell our citizens as mayor and as a crabber of not to lose hope because he'd be lose hope you know and always lost you don't want to lose hope like we were talking about protecting your soul I mean yeah that's just a common sense yeah I think you would want to rank or check the topsoil because it's vital to farm and like our shoreline is why go to us where I'm from the southeastern part of Pennsylvania that at least 60% of the fields have something growing in an over winter and that I'd say years ago it was 15 or 20 percent maybe and that's really improved but the thing of it is there are parts of the country the u.s. that's only one or two or three percent covered now and and so I think using what we've accomplished here in the Chesapeake Bay hopefully is going to stimulate you know more of this to helpfully clean up our watershed yeah in the future we've got a staff on top of it because farmers like the Waterman were feeding the world [Music] oh they made the loop yeah we made the loop like I said you'll always end up to the same way you [Music] you

Channel: Soil Health Institute

Views: 661,075

Rating: 4.9166665 out of 5

Keywords: Soil Health, Agriculture, Farming, Environment, Climate Change, Science

Id: ntJouJhLM48

Length: 60min 22sec (3622 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/pspahn]

This is terrific. My dad (a nurseryman for the last 40 or so years) often says we know more about outer space than we do about the soil under our feet. I sometimes speak to others about what very little I know about soil health and they look at me like I'm speaking witchcraft.