RSWD Gabe Brown 2018

my name is Gabe Brown and I'm a farmer rancher from bismarck north so I've been involved in of Agriculture for over 25 years now we're 100% zero till we eliminated the use of synthetic fertilizers after 2007 and we haven't used any fungicides or pesticides since before the turn of the century we have a very diversified ranch and by we I mean my wife and my son who's actually owner the operation now we've turned it over to him we have five thousand acres of that approximately a thousand acres is cropland and the remainder is tame and perennial pastures we grow a very diverse crop rotation everything from corn spring wheat oats barley rye triticale hairy vetch peas and the list goes on we raise grass-finished beef pastured pork grass-finished lamb we have 1400 lion hands out on pastures we grow vegetables and fruit and what I'm going to talk about today is how I transitioned from the current commoditized industrialized farming model to one thou on producing nutrients food in a way that regenerates our soils so my the topic I'm going to speak on this evening is called dirt to soil and it's how we regenerated the resources on our operation by simply following nature's template and using the principles that nature provided in order to make a living while regenerating resources it is it is true that that now I am a chicken farmer a year and a half ago we my wife and I turned over the operation to our son he's now 100% owner of it and so I work for him and it it's kind of nice in some ways that I don't have put a lot of thought into things anymore but but it kind of find it strange that that I end up doing the things he doesn't want to do but then I remember that he's probably just paying me back for the past 30 years so so when Darryl called me oh it's probably been a good year ago and asked me if I would consider speaking at this event of course I jumped at it because this is where I had my start and I asked Tara what he wanted me to talk about and he said well talk about regenerative AG in the journey that you've been on for the past 20 plus years so I'm going to talk about dirt to soil and it really brought back a lot of memories as I was putting this presentation together of the people that influenced my family and I and the friends we met along the way and and I found it kind of ironic in that I bumped into her middle stead in the hall back here and heard sitting and back and I was telling her by remember in 1997 I attended a livestock for-profit conference and I know there were several others mr. Miller and mr. Fettig were there and mr. dhowan and and one of the things that was occurring in my life at the time we had had two years of hail and then 1997 was a year of drought and this was was January that year so I had lost three crops in a row and one of the speakers that was at the conference that year was a rancher from Alberta by the name of Don Campbell and Don said in his presentation this he said if you want to make small changes change the way you do things but if you want to make major changes change the way you see things and I will never ever forget that that probably had more influence on me than anything else these past 20 plus years because I realized that I had to look at things differently so what I'm gonna do tonight I'm gonna play the role a bit of devil's advocate to start out and describe to you what I see the issues with the current production model and then how we can use regenerative agriculture to our benefit and I'm going to end tonight with some things we're working on and that I'm involved with that show a great promise for not putting more dollars in producers pockets but also really regenerating not only the health of our land but the health of our farms and our communities so you know as producers no matter where we go what we do it seems we get it pounded into us that we have to produce more and more to feed an ever growing world population right we hear that every day and every day farmers have to feed the world so we're really focused on yield and pounds and I I really enjoyed what Allen was talking about in that pounds of beef cattle is the wrong way to look at things we need to be looking at profit per acre and I would say the same thing with our grain production we should not be looking at yield we should be looking at profit and over the years I've come to realize that I will take profit over yield any day and there's a big difference between the two you know you know so in order to do this what do we do you can drive for a long ways especially when you head south and east of here and all you see is fields of monoculture corn monoculture soybeans you had west of here we see wheat upon wheat you head into Canada its canola their rotation up there it seems to me is canola snow canola you know that's all you see pretty much is canola although I was surprised just last month I was traveling into central Saskatchewan and I saw a lot of soybeans being grown up there now it's amazing this whole continents becoming nothing but corn and beans we also see a lot of livestock in confinement and I don't care what type of livestock we're talking about whether it's beef cattle dairy augs poultry all in confinement that's a satellite image of a feedlot you know really makes you want to eat beef doesn't it okay these practices cause what loss of biodiversity right we're losing the diversity in our ecosystem my son for for five years he taught rangeland management at this college and he brought his students out to that particular paddock of ours it's a what we call a native paddock hello Alan savory was on our ranch a year ago and he corrected me Gabe there's no such thing as native how do we know it's it's a community of clients well in a two hour time frame my son and his students collected over a hundred and forty different species of grasses forbs and legumes that's diversity yet us in our infinite wisdom think we should plant a monoculture do you not think there was a reason that these ecosystems evolved with that type of diversity that lack of diversity then leads to a destruction of what the soil aggregate the soils that's the same soil and I know many of you have seen this photo it's all over the Internet a farmer took a forested area cleared part of it just like Francis is doing in Africa that was four point three percent organic matter farmed it monoculture soybeans for 17 years 1.6 percent organic matter which of those soils is going to have more soil life which has more carbon which is going to infiltrate more water which is going to hold more water yet that's what we're doing with tillage and monoculture agriculture if we look under a microscope we can see the pore spaces and I'll talk more about that coming up that lack of biodiversity then leads to lower nutrient cycling which leads to what increase use of synthetic fertilizers if we're not able to get the production from a naturally functioning ecosystem we're gonna use synthetics in order to boost production and we can't blame the people back or our forefathers in the 1940s and 50s for using these synthetics you know because they saw a significant increase in production by using them but we have to look at the bigger picture and look at the ecosystem and increased use of synthetic fertilizer Spurs the decline of what Chris Nichols talked about this mycorrhizal fungi we have to have mycorrhizal fungi in the soil for that transfer of nutrients water and for the formation of soil aggregates we have to feed soil biology we use larger amounts of synthetics we're going to see a decline in soil biology I like this photo that is 20 plus years no-till ok is no-till the answer no it's a piece of the puzzle it's a piece of a much bigger puzzle it seems as producers we get so hung up on our tools we forget to look at how ecosystems function the issue with this producers model is it's all monoculture and it's the overuse of synthetics what happens in a soil environment several producers today talked about carbon and nitrogen ratios if we use a high amount of synthetic nitrogen the biology is going to consume that and then what's going to happen they're gonna have to go looking for carbon right where are they gonna find that carbon if they already consumed all the residue on the soil surface in the soil aggregate right they're going after that carbon in the soil aggregate pretty soon we get soils that look like that what's going to be the infiltration rate on those soils you know well under half an inch an hour so do we create our own droughts I think so half inch of rainfall cannot infiltrate so what does this producer go and do they'll put in tile drainage right really they've destroyed the soil ecosystem it's all for not high use of synthetic fertilizer also aids in the propagation of what weeds most weeds and and I prefer to look at weeds is just forage for livestock but most weeds are high nitrogen users so because of this what do we do increased number of leads we're gonna spray herbicides right what's the issue with that we talked about it earlier in the question and answer the question was ants asked of Chris what are the ramifications of some of these herbicides a lot of the herbicides being used today are key lehder they tie up metals they bind to metals right metals such as zinc manganese magnesium iron copper are now unavailable to the growing plant okay those micronutrients are often needed by the plant to ward off diseases because plants then are not able to uptake them they can't ward off the disease then we're stuck what spraying a fungicide 20 plus years ago did we spray many fungicides no did we see much fungal diseases not near to the extent we see them today I work with many many producers this is an everyday protocol for them in their crop production model we're gonna spray a fungicide regardless blanket application fungicides then are detrimental to what soil biology the same soil biology that drives the nutrient cycle that can put more profit in our pockets because plants are not healthy enough to ward off pests we do what we spray a pesticide right because we spray pesticides we have a decline in insects particularly to pollinators and including the pollinators the very same pollinators that are critical to pollinate our crops does this make sense are we shooting ourself in one foot and putting a bandaid on the other I think so that's the current production model being used today these pesticides also the clot caused a decline in the predator insects the very same predator insects that would consume the pest if we had the diverse ecosystem to be a home for those predators so what effect is the current production model have on our resources this is Iowa that's supposed to play but I guess I'll just go this is Iowa and 2017 we shouldn't be seeing that in production agriculture today last spring we were putting on a soil health school down in Oklahoma they closed the interstate down because of blowing soil it was a hazard we shouldn't be seeing this in our country or anywhere around the world look at this there's Colorado in 1935 in the lower-right Colorado in 2014 what have we learned we're seeing this everywhere and there were several photos by the presenters this morning in this afternoon on that this photo was taken in Burleigh County jr. to remember this one that's that's a producer's topsoil he had seeded wheat we had three days of 60 mile an hour sustained winds I'm pointing to the top wire and a three wire barbed wire fence there completely covered in soil there's his wheat crop the thickness of a sheet of paper is equivalent to one ton of topsoil per acre how many tons of topsoil did he lose there and we we wonder why we're working with the degraded resource those soils end up in our watersheds and they bring with it the nutrients we applied you know why wouldn't we want to hold those nutrients on our own land and then we have water quality issues every summer we hear about the water quality issues in the Gulf the Great Lakes the Chesapeake the estuaries out in on the west coast it's occurring everywhere a greater and greater problem the industrialized commoditized production model is all about killing it's about killing weeds pass fungus diversity our soil and also our profit take a look at this this is from stats Canada it's some information and it holds true for the United States to the blue is input cost the green down there is profit for the producer the last figures I heard in the United States the average farmer received twelve point six cents out of every food dollar call me greedy but I want the other eighty six cents to every day we put at risk our capital our livelihood and what do we get in return we're exporting the wealth off the land we need to put it back into our pockets where it belongs as I said we've been told we need to produce more to feed the world so we focus on higher yields and higher palms but higher and higher yields and pounds only lead to lower prices and it leads to more farm subsidies you know I have a real issue when farmers complain about the 19 trillion dollar deficit and here we are going to the mailbox to see if we have a check you know think about it that just is not right but Gabe were feeding the world really current world population and I just looked this up 7.2 billion any guess how many people we could have fed with the food produced last year any guesses ten point two billion people okay so you are told everyday that you have to produce more and more pounds more and more bushels to feed the world and you we do it over and over again but we're hitting ourselves if we think the growing population will cure a low commodity prices it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen at all what does all of this production done for the quality of our food supply yes we produce plenty of food but the nutrient density of the food we produced has decreased from 15 to 65 percent in the last 50 years Russell had this slide up it's the nutrient density of 27 different kinds of vegetables meats the same way take a look at that look at iron declined by 54% it's absolutely amazing so what are we doing we're producing more and more an individual today would have to consumed about twice as much meat three times as much fruit four times as much vegetables to get the same amount of minerals that they could from those foodstuffs in 1940 look at that results in this the United States spends more on health care than any of the country in the world and I don't think anybody here would argue with that yet look at this we ranked at the top or near the top and a dd ADHD cancer Parkinson's Alzheimer's autoimmune diseases osteoporosis and the list goes on now am i standing here blaming farmers for all of that no absolutely not however as a producer we all have to take our share of the blame for that this is dr. Zach Busch I had the privilege of meeting dr. Bush earlier this year he was one of the world's foremost authorities in cancer treatment he spent his adult life working on chemotherapy protocol this man knows human health and it's absolutely amazing to sit down and talk with him dr. Bush I spent a week with him here in August and he made this comment the best way to address this human health crisis is with nutrient-dense food the only way to produce nutrient dense food is with healthy soil see dr. Bush gave up his career treating cancer started his own clinic where he's treating people through the food they eat but what he found after two years of doing that is half the people were getting better half weren't so he dove into it further and he realized it's the soil it all nutrients come from the soil we have to have healthy soil in order to produce nutrient-dense food so our challenge then as producers is to produce high quality nutrient-dense food in a way that not only regenerates our resource but puts a reasonable profit into our pockets to do this we must regenerate our ecosystems and we must are working with nature instead of against her so many of you have seen this slide it outlines the principles that nature goes by in nature there's no mechanical disturbance there's armor on the soil surface nature is always trying to cover the soil why do we have weeds growing nature is trying to cover the soil nature is trying to balance a nutrient deficiency in nature's there's a diversity of plants animals insects nature cycles water very efficiently there's living plant rut networks there's nutrient cycling via biology and there's thousands of years of research and development why do we want to impose our will on nature it seems to me the current production model is all about being antagonistic to nature we have to work with nature instead of against her you know when you go out and buy a vehicle a tractor and implement a washer/dryer you always get an owner's menu but there was no owners manual given to us when we purchased her rented land right this book was written by John sticker from Dickinson North Dakota a soil owner's manual I give that away to people all the time it is a great learning tool that outlines the principles that I just talked about so I want to go down the path that I went down a number of years ago to learn about regenerative agriculture and I had the good fortune in 1998 as Darrell said I was asked to run for a position on the Burley County Soil District Board of supervisor best thing that could have happened to me next to those four years of crop failures but I was very fortunate I tell people that Gabe brown really isn't very intelligent as a matter of fact iord Russell Hedrick talked about dr. Rick Haney dr. Rick Haney and one of his presentations put up a picture of Homer Simpson and he said the world's simplest creature and then he put up split-screen Gabe brown and and strikingly similar you know and he said if the world's simplest creature can understand these principles anybody can so I had the good fortune that I was able to learn from people who really have the intelligence to know what they're talking about so one of the first things I remember after I got on the board Jay lined up a busload and we went down to Dakota lakes and visited with dr. back in and it was shortly thereafter that the district ended up buying a no-till planter and at that time then no-till became prevalent in Burleigh County and in south central North Dakota and I'll never forget the the impact that Dwayne had on my operation and our operation has been a hundred percent zero till since 1994 and were focused on not disturbing that soil structure the other thing I really had to good fortune was that Jay was the district conservationist and you know I went through four years of hail and drought and at times I felt like I was on an island and realized back then there it wasn't the internet like there is today Al Gore hadn't invented it yet evidently but but I finally had somebody that I could bounce ideas off of and somebody that you Jays favorite saying I think was but Gabe you could do better I remember so he would tell me that time and time again and it just pissed me off so I'd have to try and do better all the time you know but Jay taught us the importance of carbon and the importance of armor on the soil surface I remember him learning from dr. Don Makowski about the carbon cycle and then he had come to the board meetings and share it with that and that really drove home the fact to us supervisors and employees of the district that we had to protect that soil surface so we're going to put as much armor on the soil surface as possible to feed biology keep soil temperatures down suppress weeds and save it from erosion in 2006 Jay and I went to no-till on the plains conference and I'll never forget Jay was sitting ahead of me across the aisle so you didn't want to know that he was you didn't want people to know that I was associated with him so he was sitting up a ways but dr. Caligari made this statement cover crops are meant to be seeded in multi species combinations and I'll remember Jay turning and look at me and I went though you know that just makes sense look at native prairie we had been seeding to in three-way combinations and people thought we were nuts for doing that but when you really think about what dr. Caligari was saying and you think about the native ecosystem it only makes sense its diversity that we need so we went home and immediately started planting very very diverse mixes this photo is that this picture is a photo of my diverse vegetable garden there's actually like 30 species of vegetables in there 20 species of grasses and legumes and then another 20-plus species of flowers in there that's diversity what we are really trying to do is optimize solar energy collection and all of us as producers I don't care whether you're a grain farmer buy a beef cattle man a dairy then a vegetable farmer or an orchard production fruit production all we're trying to do is capture that solar energy and that solar energy is free let me ask you this if we were to take one of those plants on there doesn't matter which species and dry it down what would that plant be made of that it's going to be about 97% carbon oxygen nitrogen and hydrogen those four elements what are those four elements have in common they're all in the air right and they're all available to us all we have to do is grow things in order to take that out of the atmosphere and put it in the soil it absolutely blows my mind how us as farmers think we have to do all these different tests and everything in order to add exactly what those plants need the plants know what they need the biology knows what the plants need we can pull those nutrients out of the atmosphere and out of the parent material in the soil now will that produce the kind of yields you want maybe not however it will produce profitable yields if your production model is right we also at that time really began to integrate livestock onto our cropland and I'll never forget going to Neil Dennis's and as I was coming back across the border it just struck me I knew right then and there that animal impact on our cropland was the missing link in taking soil health on cropland to another level so we're doing that in a big way on our operation we're grazing a variety different cover crops at all times in order to get animal impact and the benefits of them onto those particular pieces I just put this slide in there because even though I'm talking mostly about cropland tonight it's every bit as critical and important on our grazing lands as it is on crop just like Alan Newport told us earlier this afternoon I want to show you this photo because people they want to know can you really grow soil can we grow soil so Kenny Miller at noon talked about how he's he stockpiles forage here's some of our stockpiled forage and we do this on a number of acres every year we don't run cattle on those acres during the growing season we'll stockpile that for use throughout the winter or early the next spring so this is a photo of us grazing that stockpiled forage in early April you see it's just starting to green up we got somewhere to turn the cows out on we leave like can we leave the calves on the cows all winter wean them in April and then turn those cows up they're out they're thin but they blow up like ticks on us put on five pounds a day easy before calving they're in perfect shape that's Nature's cycle so here they are grazing it we're laying that residue down on the soil surface as armor to protect the soil and to feed biology now dr. Christine Jones was at our place three years later we dug down in there that layer is this residue three years later what's that above you might argue that that's not really soil I don't care to me I'm growing topsoil that's what we're doing we can regenerate soils this way that's the way these prairie ecosystems were formed over time dr. John hundra and you're going to get to hear from dr. Lundgren tomorrow you know I I just thought I knew bees were good you know and I do dung beetles were good but I didn't know the importance this biodiversity has in forming a healthy soil ecosystem and dr. Lundgren told me that for every insect species that's a pest there's up to 1,700 that are beneficial so here we are as producers focused on killing that pest when instead we really should be focused on providing a home in habitat for all these other insects that really help put dollars in our pocket I wanted to put this slide in there because we're talking about diversity this is one of the things that we're doing on our operation now is we no longer plant monoculture cash crops for the last several years this is a mix of oats barley peas flax and lentils we're growing them together combining them together perfect for our hog rations perfect for our poultry rations perfect for the cover crop seed you tell me what issue you got that I got the perfect response no the fact of the matter is why not take advantage of the synergies I've got grasses I've got legumes in that mix they work in synergy with each other nature is much much more collaborative than it is competitive why not take advantage of that tomorrow you're going to be hearing from Dara Caxton and what they're doing with polyculture cash crops as I travel the country now talking I tell people I really think within 10 years this polyculture cash crops will be the norm in production agriculture and Derrick will talk more about that dr. Chris Nichols who you heard from I'll never forget when she come to my place in 2003 and she challenged me she said Gabe your systems come a long way but you will never be truly sustainable unless you back off on the use of synthetics why because I was killing the mycorrhizal fungi it absolutely blows my mind how producers today will spend so much money in order to precision plant and to put down these nutrients right where they need them if you have decent mycorrhizal fungi in your soil it's going to move the nutrients throughout the whole field sign the back of the check not the front it's a lot you know better relationship with the wife when you do so ray Archuleta you know the other day I was having a conversation with Ray and Ray is now a business partner of mine along with dr. Allen Allen Williams and David Brandt and I said you know ray I often think and wonder what would have happened if Jay won't have brought him to my place back in 2007 because my wife would my life would be a lot easier since now be without knowing him and my wife maybe a little happier or maybe not I don't know I'm gone so much who knows but Ray really was the first one that really drove home the fact that plant and soil are one we cannot have a healthy soil ecosystem without living plants take a look at this photo I really like that that's an old lake bed but look at the topsoil that's formed there how do we get from there to there living plants correct we've all driven through the mountains and seen this photo of a tree growing out of a rock is there a pocket of soil in there no plants take in co2 out of the atmosphere photosynthesis occurs a lot of it is converted to sugars amino acids and other compounds a portion of that then is translocated to the roots and exuded into the soil this is a root tip exuding those compounds into the soil why is it doing that why would a plant put so much effort into collecting that sunlight and making those compounds and then exude it into the soil the answer of course is to feed soil biology and as chris said we don't even begin to understand the importance and the the what this biology all does but it it is the key to everything it's the key to building soil aggregates the key to nutrient cycling the key to profitability a large part of those compounds are consumed by microbes part of it combines with water and forms carbonic acid and it's that mild acid that breaks down rocks organic matter that parent material making nutrients available to the plant you know we quit using synthetic fertilizer after 2007 on our own Dacres and I remember in the early years people told me Gabe your systems gonna crash you can get enough nitrogen out of the atmosphere above every acre of land there's approximately 32,000 tons of atmospheric nitrogen I'll never forget my good friend Jack Stoll is sitting at the front table for Manning Alberta I first went to Manning in 2012 and put a presentation on with the help of Tom who's in the room back here also in Nora and Jack ina I thought he thought I was crazy but later on I get a picture of these hopper bottom storage bins and Jack tells me Gabe do you realize that there's more atmospheric nitrogen above the footprint to those bins than can be held in those bins and I said good for you Jack you got it it boggles my mind why any producer would write a check for nitrogen fertilizer we've got that much free in the atmosphere all we have to do is be wise enough in our thinking and planning to have the legumes in our rotation and have the biology because as soil scientists are discovering there's a xoto bacter and all these types of biology that actually have the ability to take that nitrogen out of the atmosphere and make it available to the plants but they said Gabe you can get nitrogen out of the atmosphere but you're going to run out of phosphorus and potassium no I'm not as long as I can get a root in the soil and that root can keep going down and I build soil health I'm going to be able to take that out of the parent material do the math if you've applied phosphorus once in the past 20 years you've got enough phosphorus in your soils for your lifetime do the math all you got to do is do the math and it equates out yet here we as producers keep dumping copious amounts into the soil and then we wonder why urban public is so upset with us because it's now in their drinking water you know we got to stop and think about that I can grow roots of perennials and Alan showed this deeper and deeper and deeper and I can break down that parent material and then the trick is to cycle it in our own ecosystem roots feeding biology lead to porosity remember taking that photo Jai took that photo after a thirteen point six inch rainfall event on my place in 2009 the more pore spaces the greater the infiltration the greater the home for soil biology as producers we have come to accept a degraded resource I spend the majority of my time traveling across North America speaking to producers about soil health and regenerative egg every single time I speak at a conference I hear people say but Gabe you don't understand our soils aren't like that you don't understand you know I was in Iowa and they said now Gabe before you give a presentation you know we are in Iowa these are the greatest soils in the world and it proceeded to rain half an inch that day and there was water ponding on the soil surface and I got up and I said your soils are crap I would not trade my souls for Iowa soils for anything you know we've degraded our resource and resource and I tell people I have never ever been on an operation anywhere in the world including my own that's not degraded we are all working with degraded resources but the fact of the matter is we can regenerate them this is Michael Thompson in western Kansas Michael went down the regenerative path a number of years ago to his father's credit his father let him tilled soil know that lack of diversity three years later with using diversity in the crop rotation cover crops integrating livestock isn't that phenomenal three years differences all we can do this this is ten years of regenerative AG look at that soil there's 20 years of these regenerative principles we can regenerate our soils so don't think you're stuck with what you have how far you go down this path is totally up to you now some of the things I'm involved with there's a company called land stream land streams mission is to quantify ecosystem practices so we're involved on our operation dr. john norman is the lead scientist you may not know dr. john norman but he has so many PhDs i couldn't list them all he developed the instrumentation for nassau that nasa uses to measure biomass production on earth that's how smart this guy is so John's been to my place a number of times they came and they pulled a hundred and ninety soil samples four feet deep on five hundred and twenty three acres they are analyzing that for about everything imaginable everything from all the nutrients all the soil quality indicators and then we're going to quantify how much carbon in real time we're able to pull out of the atmosphere pump into the soil and then we're doing tests on the products that we're producing on our ranch and we're gonna find out can soil health be equated to nutrient-dense food it's about a 1.5 million dollar project and it's going to be three to five years before we get the results but here's what he's found on the tests he's taken so far we've pumped enough carbon into the soil to equate to 92 tons per acre which is the equivalent of sixty thousand four hundred tons of thermal coal soil colors showed aggregation down to 48 inches 48 inch probe we had well aggregated soils all the way down dr. Norman said some of the samples are now at 70% pore space which he had never ever seen before he also found a horizon topsoil remember jeremy was talking about that this small 29 inches deep as compared to other farms in the area that were five inches people that you know so often researchers said oh it'll take 500 a thousand years to grow an inch of topsoil no it won't we can do it in a much shorter time using nature's principles it's all up to our stewardship though as to how fast and how far we advance so another company that I'm working with is called the bio nutrient food association they've developed they'll they've had engineers develop this meter it's going to be it's about the size of a cell phone and what you'll be able to do with that meter is you can walk into a grocery store farmer's market anywhere you can scan over that product and it'll read nutrient density think of the difference that's going to make in production agriculture so I'm growing carrots and Scots growing carrots all of a sudden grocer sells out of Scots carrots okay why because people are reading higher nutrient density they're willing to pay more for it how much more that that depends supply and demand right all of a sudden the grocers not buying any carrots for me and I'm going hey what the hey and the grocer is going you better find out what Scots doing those carrots are higher nutrient dense and either flying off the shelves this is coming and it's coming soon now I predict the next step beyond that is that device is going to read chemical residues also okay what will that mean for each of our operations we here in the northern Great Plains were kind of isolated unfortunately I get taken to the coasts at times and I learn a lot from the urban public out there they are buying according to what they perceive to be food that's higher in nutrient density and the way it's grown or raised that's very very important to them and they're willing to pay for it now our challenged and as producers is to provide them with that product at a price point where we can make a reasonable profit so those are some of our grass-finished stakes by the way another company that that you'll be hearing a you you already know them but that I've had the pleasure of working with here now that's going down this regenerative path is General Mills this past winter I worked with them to develop a regenerative based questionnaire that they're it's 25 questions and you as a producer answer those questions and some of the questions will be like do you grow a cover crop on every field every year if you do you're in the gold category if you say well I grow a cover crop on 75% or more of the acres you're in the silver category now don't hold me to these I don't remember the exact standards but if you grow a cover crop on less than that you're in the bronze category you're going to be paid for your products your food your selling to them based on that you know are you zero till the utili field an average of once every two years once a year what is it your being based on that do you have armor in the soil surface what's the diversity of your crop rotation how many species do you have all four crop types they're willing to stick their money where their mouth is and it's to their benefit because they're a for-profit business you know they're gonna use it in advertising etc don't kid yourself but if we can put more dollars in the producers pocket and you've all be in here tonight you're a well down the path already of regenerative agriculture why wouldn't you take advantage of that if not you're going to be left out one's ability to be successful with regenerative agriculture is directly related to one is understanding of how soils and the soil ecosystems function it's not change that we're looking for it's understanding because through understanding change will occur and I really believe that and those of us who have been in this a long time it's taken a long time for that snowball to start going downhill but look at it you can hardly pick up a farm publication today without them talking about soil health without them talking about biodiversity and these principles that I shared with you so this is the cash flow statement on our ranch we start with carbon everything's based around carbon soil water sunlight we grow all these different and raise all these different products and then we're marketing them directly with the consumer our goal is to capture a higher and higher percentage of the food dollar are we capturing a hundred percent no but we're well above seventy percent right now don't tell me there's not money in production agriculture there's not money in the commoditized industrial type model but there is money in production agriculture what you want to do is totally up to you but this is how my family and I are moving down the path yes we can feed the world and we can do it while regenerating our resources thus we're going to heal farms families and communities now just to make sure you're awake I had to put that one in there saw that that's all I have thank you any any questions any questions I'll be around all day tomorrow so yes there's one back here from how long was the journey to drop synthetic fertilizer I want to be cute I want to be crystal clear about this I am NOT standing here telling you to drop all synthetics you will have a wreck if you do that okay it's a weaning process we have to build soil biology for me realize you know I'll I'm a slow learner I had to learn everything the hard way usually twice okay so you know what is really gratifying to me is to see young people like Russell and and we're gonna hear from Derek tomorrow they've taken their operations further in five years than I did in 25 so it's an unfair question to me you know once Chris gave me that challenge you know it's kind of like Jay always telling me yeah but you could do better you know I was going to either prove Chris wrong or right so I did split trials for four years you know and for those four years the non fertilized was more profitable every year than the fertilizer so then I just dropped it totally on our own land and since then we've dropped it on all rented land but I can't answer that it's up to you the beautiful thing about the Haney tests that that Russell described is it's the best test out there today with today's knowledge to guide you down that path because it the accuracy is there they've done enough tests you can use it do the trials like Russell said on your own operation and wean yourself off yep any other question yes yeah some of the racks I would have avoided well I wouldn't have a Dre come to the place no hi I'm Kim you know and here's what I tell people I often get asked what are your failures so I you know I don't want to fail at that but I tell them just because it was a failure at my place does not mean it's a failure at yours you know Lauren said that really well this morning when he talked about we have to experiment for ourselves if I had to say one thing though that that's blanket these principles work anywhere in the world where there's production agriculture the tools you use will be different species of crops livestock etc but you know Francis showed us he's doing it in Africa the one thing that I didn't do from the get-go that I wish I would have was have a living root in the ground as long as possible throughout the year we have to grow things and so often as producers look at this year you know harvest there was some crops we got harvested early and then some or later but as soon as we're combine in a crop we've got the drill running Russell's showed what he's doing Jeremy showed what he's doing always have that living plant you're not going to cycle that carbon and that energy out of the atmosphere if you don't yes yeah yeah realize I was already no-till and we went 100% zero till the spring of 1994 so I was no tilling we had a good crop 94 in 1995 we lost 100% of our crop to hail Hino hail insurance you know because it just inhale much at our place we thought so that set us back financially next year the banker was willing to stick with us we lost a hundred percent to hail again well my wife and I both took off farm jobs and I you know I didn't know anything about soil health I was simply trying to keep the banker at bay and make my land payments you know 1997 we dried out and never combined an acre I started to plant things though that fall we caught a little rain I started planting like rye and hairy vetch together you know I was just trying to grow something feed for livestock 1998 came along and we lost 80 percent of our crop tail but it hailed in June so I planted I planted sorghum Sudan grass cow peas millet together I literally did not have the money to buy twine so we grazed the cattle on it during early winter I had no idea that that was winter grazing and is what I should be doing so I learned all these things it was a piece at a time then when I got on the Burley County Board and met Jay and the bunch and we started to bounce ideas then I really saw the difference we saw earthworms coming back I tell people I couldn't go fish in the first ten years I was on that place you'd never find an earthworm you know all of a sudden we had earthworms appearing we could see the difference in the soil structure and I knew something's happening here you know and and Jay saw it too and others did and kinda then I had somebody to bounce ideas off of and Jacob crackin the whip and trying to beat it into me you know these principles so it just took time there wasn't a light bulb moment but that's the one reason I shared with you the people that influenced me so much because Lauren said it really well you got to develop these networks I didn't have an work back then it was Rea old race tire in North Carolina who I read some articles about in David Brant in Ohio with no internet I just read about him you know I researched Thomas Jefferson's old journals what he was growing in Monticello you know it was either do or die and so often those of us going down that path that's the way it was but the beauty of it is with this regenerative model and you see it here today everybody's willing to share and that's a great thing develop those networks and and learn from it yeah Jack do I want to take your question is there a place for genetic modified plants is there a place for genetically modified plants in a natural system one of the things I'll never forget 2010 my son was in college and I was talking about corn yields and I said you know my yields aren't quite as high as the neighbors and he said dad you're just trying to help produce your environment and I will never forget that conversation we have to remember that the ecosystems grassland ecosystems of the Great Plains were a low nitrogen system it's a slow release nitrogen that's how nature function that's how come they could produce these tall grass prairies you know producing tremendous biomass because it's a slow release since that time I have not one moment about yield or pound whatever nature provides nature provides now you asked about the GMOs this is how I answer that Russell showed you what the genetics of a corn that was from the 1850s you said Russell yeah look at that 170 years old produced 318 bushel corn and won the corn yield contest in North Carolina do you think he would have got any better with GMOs the other thing I will say we're direct marketing our products directly to consumers and my son has now over eight thousand customers that have or have are are buying from him the number one question they ask when they come up and buy from him is where are you from they want to know they're a farmer the number two question asked by over 70% of them do you grow any GMOs if we say yes we are done they will not do business with us so my personal thoughts on GM or why would I want to do that when it's going to cut into my profits plain and simple I'm not God it's not for me to decide yes behind it arrow yeah the question was do I use glyphosate we did at one time I have not used glyphosate in quite a few years now the reason being you know is what I showed you glyphosate is a key later it's what dr. Nichols talked about its patented as a biocide there's two it's water-soluble if you listen to dr. Zack Bush you will not use glyphosate okay he can explain better than anyone else what's happening because it's water soluble and in our systems and I'm not beating up on just glyphosate it's the overuse of any of these synthetics okay so the question then is do I use herbicides we have a number of fields at our place that are six years now no herbicide we haven't used a pesticide or fungicide since before the turn of the century with the exception of seed treatment on corn and we we discontinued that in 2010 we have never used seed treatment on any of the other seeds okay so so it's strictly a herbicide I've got a number of fields that are six years no herbicide all the way down to we did this year we sprayed a 10 acre field and a 40 acre field with a herbicide your question about taking out perennials I have not done that yet taking out perennials and put it back into an annual system we enjoy livestock more than grain farming so that's where our focus on like Ken Miller we're seeing a lot of our cropland acres back to baronial 's will we take them out at one time maybe so but there's other modes of action that we can do that with besides glyphosate it would be extremely easy for our operation to become certified organic you know we could already certify all the pasture acres all the hail and acres most of the cropland acres however we're selling our products for higher than organic prices why would I need to certify organic so I just have no desire to do so yeah I am allergic to paperwork plain and simple yeah and you know despite most of the farmers ranchers in this room I am not addicted to work okay plain and simple bother questions with that there's one right here so you talked about the overuse of synthetic fertilizers could the same be said about manures and stuff oh great question can the same be said about the overuse of an ER so just this past winter we've held soil health Academy schools in Eastern Iowa and in North Carolina large confinement hog and poultry operations in both states and many of them are putting up those confinement operations to have access to the manures but what's happening it's not fresh manure there's a huge difference between something falling out of the back end of an animal and something that has been in a slurry and in those type of conditions it's actually if we're applying copious amounts our large amounts of those liquid manures were actually detrimental it's actually detrimental to soil health there's toxins involved and we're having a negative impact on soil biology so huge difference between animals out on the landscape and using manures from confinement situations yes good question well with that John's cow although it's gonna be okay believe Richards too got a question back here the last name and you've just made about manure why do you think there is that difference yeah and the difference is the lack of oxygen in those pits and and Chris can answer the question way better than I can so I encourage you to ask Chris that question specifically on a break or that but it's different biology it's the lack of oxygen and it's also they're finding is a penicillin that's being produced in those type of a system so you're applying that to the landscape then it's negatively affecting biology yep and it you know we're also working with one at one of the one of the joys of being in the soil health consulting businesses we're working with a lot of producers that I normally would not come into contact with one of them is a very very large producer of vegetables under greenhouse and they are finding the nutrient density of what's being produced in that greenhouse is just terrible and we're actually switching all the production in that greenhouse into soil versus in a growing medium we're also working with a producer a hundred thousand irrigated acres imagine that and what they're finding they're exporting off large amounts of of biomass going to feed dairies and feed Lots and then they're bringing those manures just like we talked about back on to those pivots and the soil health has just crashed for one thing it's it's too much nitrogen too much phosphorus they're destroying the carbon in in the soil aggregate infiltration rates are going down they're losing their production and they're having to abandon a lot of these irrigated acres because of that John yeah you're exactly right and we have studies done from large dairies out east that show they they actually should be applying about one twentieth of what they are applying and are allowed to apply you know but they've got to go somewhere with it and lands at such a premium they have nowhere to go you know it's one of the reasons though that we're seeing consumers gravitate away from that production model you know yeah that's right well with that I want to thank everyone and I'll be around all day tomorrow and and there's a really good lineup of speakers [Applause]

Channel: Menoken Farm

Views: 45,970

Rating: 4.8784533 out of 5

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Id: ZTpYG0rAhBQ

Length: 64min 45sec (3885 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2018