 Well Looks like our people They're gonna have to have a lot less water use right here, right? They're all left here We're not gonna have as much, but I really want to I think very interesting discussion I thought earlier and I wasn't gonna do this demonstration because it takes a little bit And you know and I've forgotten if anybody's ever seen this but I think it's really germane to what we were talking about Because I heard a lot of discussion about water And how we need to you know We need more water to put on our crops and we need you know reservoirs and which I have no problem with But I heard very little discussion and no discussion about the basic resource that we're going to be applying that water to Which is the soil? And my whole point is we're going to be I'm going to be talking about ways that we can improve the soil So we may be able to minimize the requirement of water usage that we have and the other point I think it's that right. I need a couple volunteers here. So I'm gonna pick on This gentleman right here. Yeah, you see yeah. Yeah, you can grab the guy next to you. It's interesting. They're right there It's this is a plus it's kind of late in the day in the end and you know People have been a lot of information a lot of bar graphs and charts and that kind of stuff. So all I do We I work for NRCS and I'm an old guy I've actually got 38 years of spirit now normally what I do is I ask the crowd How many people are that old and the crowd I talk to most of them are not that old so it makes me feel good anyway But why once you guys have come up here What I want to do is we go around the country talking about soil health and how soils function and it really is amazing to me How little farmers know about how soils what they are and how they're supposed to function and this is two simple Demonstrations we do so what's your need your bill? Okay, I'm gonna give you that Claude and You're Robert. Okay. Now what I do kind of hold those up and what I do is ask these these soils No, you yeah, I kind of hold it up Maybe the camera take a look at now what these soils if you were to go to a USDA soil survey if everybody know what that is Yeah, okay, everybody should raise your hand on that one. Okay, that's that these are mapped the same It's a it's a Clifton fine sandy loam soil What's that means? It was formed in the same way the same five soil forming processes Form this soil and that's all now those look like the same soils to you either from the Piedmont region in North Carolina You all got Piedmont soils here. Okay. I figured you did you those are from the those look like the same soils Well, what's the main difference between the two? Yeah color one's red and one's darker brown So what's color and indicator of? Organic matter so darker color soils tend to have higher organic matters level So what we want to do is these have been air-dried Which means they've been sitting on my desk for about a week or two all the moisture sucked out of it or evaporated out of it all these the only difference between these two soils is not how they were formed but in the Decisions that the farmer made the farmer decision this farm here is red soil looks like it's cloud This one's got a few holes in it. You got a piece of vegetation there This one looks massive structure kind of crunched together Doesn't it is this came from a vegetable farm that had a lot of disturbance a lot of tillage Had a lot of excessive Applications of herbicides and pesticides that was kind of a lot of synthetic material. Well, this farm this soil here Guys been practicing the soil health principles. I'll talk about the no-till for 30 years has not seen Any synthetic fertilizers in this millennium that we're going into year 14 14 cropping seasons in this millennium He manages it with cover crops No-till and maneuvers. Okay raises silage. So what I want to do is to drop these in here and just kind of see what happens here So the water is air-dried Now what'd you do there? Did you give that a little extra oomph when you threw that in there? Wait a minute what what's happening here? Again, it's important to understand how soils function before we can solve these water issues that you talked about What's happening as the water infiltrates this one look got some air bubbles coming out here, don't we? Yeah, they're bubble right there. I like to have my mind I want to say that you guys can validate to see the air bubble What's going on is the water is going in these pore spaces and the strength of the water Exceeds the strength of the soil here. So it's falling apart it slakes Whereas this one This one's a lot of disturbance minimum disturbance. The water is soaking in same amount of pore Well, actually has more pore space has bigger pore space But what's going on? This is biologically dead. This soil is biologically alive and The biotic glues that are made from the bacteria and the fungi and all these things these microorganisms that we previously thought were Negative to the soil are binding and holding this soil together Okay, now think about that. You say that's kind of neat. So what's going to happen? This is going to fall apart by the 10 in my presentation and this thing will hold together Till tomorrow or to the next day and you go in there and you break it apart It'll be moist in it, but it still have that aggregation that's being formed and held together by the microbes in the soil Okay, that's a pretty neat demonstration, but you think I'm big whoop. Okay, right? It's right Steve big whoop Okay, well, we'll show you what big whoop is now the next next part of my demo here I want you to just take this these are the same soils and all I've done is pour them into this thing These got holes in the bottom, you know verify the holes. Yeah, there's holes in the bottom Okay, and all I do is just take this spoon kind of tap around the edge Kind of seal it off a little bit so then leak around the edge there And I want you to do is make it rain. So just pour those on there so but before you do this. I got question I'm from Indiana and we were taught in Indiana What you do is soil is you till the soil one of the benefits of tillage is you fluff it up So it absorbs more water, right? Yeah, yeah, they teach out here at Auburn Steve Okay, I might have been the class you skipped right? Anyway, they teach you all right. So we till soil to fluff it up. So it's over water. Okay, that's a universal Application of tillage. Okay, so this one's tilled. This is from the no-till Healthy soil poor soil. So this pour the water on there. Let's see what happens. I hope this works We're kind of simulator rain fall there Okay, yeah, it's gonna be okay. Well wait a minute that one's leaking through pretty fast. Now. Why is that? Why is the water going through the no-till no way and the other thing is how come it's ponding on top of this? Think about I thought if we fluff soils Tilt it up. It's supposed to soak through right. It's not soaking through very fast either. What's gonna happen all this water here? We're talking about water. We're talking about crop production. We're talking about building reservoirs, weren't we? We're talking about runoff. Do you want this is what's gonna go fill your reservoir up, isn't it? So that means tillage is good because it's gonna seal off all that landscape because there is that what we want No, that's not what we want. What we want is that water to soak in through the soil. Why is that soaking in there? It's got pores. It's got macro pores. It's got micro pores. It's got what it's got organic matter Organic now what's organic matter do besides give color? Gives a structure. Okay, what else to do? So you got water we want it to soak through and not run off and while it's soaking through down in that soil profile We want it to hold on to some of it, right? So when you get to that June July and August that you all are worried about getting dry We want to be able to give it back. Did you know that every pound of organic matter can hold up to two gallons of water? Think about that. Think about every one percent organic matter in your soil increase gives you about 14,000 gallons of Available moisture during the growing season. Now, what's that mean to an irrigation system? That extra two three four days between irrigation events, you know, so we talk about Mitigating and improving things for crop production. We need to have this discussion about soil, okay? So this guy this will eventually soak through but again when it runs off It's also going to take nutrients and all those other things. So okay, let's give my two helpers a hand here See if I can get this thing woke up here. There we go. There we go. All right. All right Now I wasn't going to do that But I think it's really important because as you all have these discussions about soil or about building reservoirs and water Don't exclude the insignificance. Well, this is gonna be hard to talk to this group Gonna have to go here and there nobody in the middle. Anyway, let's talk about how many of us that have some kind of a basic soil class Okay, so we all knew we went to the soil especially when our CS people are supposed to have what 52 hours or something Steve We're supposed to have a lot of soil We all learned that soil is made up of chemical physical and biological components, right? That's nothing new And the problem is I went when I took soils back way a long time ago back in Indiana And I didn't go to the peace school. I went to another school anyway We learned that but my checked I checked when I left off. I was a student trainee I worked for NRCS or SCS of time. I left biology at the door And all we tended to focus on was the physical and the chemical because that's something we understood We could run a soil test, right and we get the chemical analysis We know the P the K the micronutrients. All I did stuff cat on exchange capacity, you know The physical part we can beat the hell out of that with our tillage equipment All right, so we know that we're trying to build structure through tillage Which I spent a long time of my life But the biology that was a little mysterious a little unknown. So we kind of left that the door. All right, and then we also knew that the The ideal soils want made up of fifty percent solids and fifty percent airspace and the airspace is supposed to be there from moisture and for air, right and We tend to I'm from the Midwest and we pretended to focus more on the the moisture part because that what's inhibited crop growth Because our roots couldn't penetrate. Okay, but actually they're supposed to be a flux You know, you got some more air moisture that type of thing and then the minerals we got sand silts and clays Make up 45% of it or so in the ideal soil and then we got 5% organic matter. Now. How many farmers out there got 5% organic matter? Really Wait a minute. Did I see a hand over there? That's really that's impressive. I Moved to Georgia from Indiana. Jimmy Dean was a state gronimist there and he showed me a soil health card And he had a I think you got a high rating if you have 1% above 1% organic matter I said Jimmy is this a typo or what? You know, of course, I'm from Indiana. We've got 3% up there, but the point is Most of our organic matter we've lost and we've talked about the loss of topsoil out there But really we've lost over 50 percent 50 percent folks of the organic matter in our soils Since we started to crop them intensively has been lost. Where's that gone? Co2 into the atmosphere. All right So we go around we talk about soil health that's driving our agency right now. It's fun to be in something like this Because it's new it's not it's innovative. It's fun. It's exciting and it's not programs Okay, I'm not up here to give you $10 an acre for doing this I'm up here to help you understand how soils function. This is definition. We need is it's the continued capacity of soil to function as A vital living ecosystem And think about that the continued capacity we're talking about something not two years down the road Not a hundred years down the road, but a sustainable system for four or five hundred years We need to do that. Okay, because of the units the materials we use we are in short supply You know we get nitrogen out of the atmosphere we mine phosphorus. Those are not in boundless materials Okay, infinite supplies. What I mean the idea soil is a vital living ecosystem How many farmers have gone out on your farm and looked at their feet and realized what's going on below your feet? The fact that there is more life below your feet than there is in the planet. It's just a tremendously intricate Deli or System down there that you need to really understand and the idea of soil to function Now, what do we need our soils to do you put that seed in the ground? We heard about wheat. We heard about corn We're in about production But what is it that seed needs from those from the soil to grow to produce these food and fiber? What do we need from our soil? What are those soil functions necessary for that? Come on? Nutrients our first one nutrients like We need to get nutrients from the soil. Do you realize that more than you put on how many they fertilize your field? All right, come on farmers You realize less than 50% of that fertilizer you put on the field ends up into the plant Think about that. That's not very efficient system is it? How's it that it gets mitigated by goes through the microbes it goes through that ecosystem? Okay, I'll talk about that What's another thing we just talked about? Water yeah, we want water to infiltrate and then we want it to be available. That's a huge thing It's huge. Okay. The third thing we want our soil to filter and buffer out pollutants We spray that's good break it down bio meridiation caused by the biology We want to have a physical solid platform. We want to be able to cross the field We talked about getting stuck in the mud didn't you say you're a pit now that makes sense Your field is so I'm picking on you your soil is so degraded that it's plugs It gets too wet from irrigation and you get stuck in it. You think about the irony that now can we overcome that? Yeah, we can you think about the rocky Brenda rocky in the high plains of the Colorado has the same issue and he gets six inches of rainfall. He's getting stuck in the mud Anyway, it's because we don't understand how soils function and it's because we don't consider this Soil is a habitat Do you remember anything soil is habitat and it can be managed or you are managing whether you recognize it or not? Okay, it habitat for soil microbes. Let's let's get into it problem is we look at the plant too much we heard about the Density of crop corn the least absorbed by more energy. That's great But where's that energy go goes down into the ground and all this kind of biology to all this biomass is being produced What's biomass? It's just living tissue whether it's vegetative tissue or whether it's a cow tissue Or sheep tissue or some kind of poultry tissue. Okay, that's biomass. Okay, and we need to recognize here's a study It was done in the University of West Virginia This poor I always fit love these studies because I know some poor grad students doing the work, you know And the PhDs are getting the credit but anyway, he said here He's raising about 600 pounds of pounds of dairy cow or about 500 pounds of beef cow and about 2,500 pounds of pounds of grass above ground So we got about what two three tons of material there not much below ground That 2,500 pounds of root mass To a ton of back to a ton a ton of bacteria so small you got you need a electron microscope to see it You got three tons of fungi add all that up. We're talking about biomass below the ground four five six thousand or four five tons, excuse me seven eight ten thousand pounds Life giving life below the ground if we manage it properly the key is We need to quit thinking about soil as this mineral substance of sand silt and clay and start thinking about as habitat Now I had to honor working in Georgia for about six years The first thing I learned over there is all we care about from wildlife is quail. Is that right? Is that the way it is when you cross the line? Everything we do is managed for quail. So how many hunters do we have out there? Got a few so if you want to build habitat for quail, what do you need to have? You need to provide three things Right, you need to provide water or food give them food you give them water and you give them a place to live It's the same thing whether you're managing for quail a rhinoceros Or a biscular mycorrhizal fungi. It's the same thing you provide those three things and they will come you're building habitat All you farmers are not tillers of the land anymore. You're managing your subsurface habitat I want you to get that in your mind and let's think about everybody familiar with a food web You know I went to college that was advanced learning not our teaching in elementary school So I don't know what that tells me about where I went to college But the idea all I know remember for colleges if you're on the food web you want to be over here Rather than here Because your life expectancy is a lot longer over here than it is here But a food web is really important and what you're doing is managing the food web in the soil to drive those soil functions I mentioned such as nutrient management water cycling and those things and let's talk about that and it's all driven by this Good presentation this morning about trapping solar energy. We heard something another one this afternoon about the Light reflection and how important it is everything's driven by the Sun, okay Now you have to bear with me because I'm going to stretch all of you because I'm going to get into this world of ecology Okay, I may have had a ecology course Go on raise your hands proudly. That's a that's a good course Yeah, that's about what I get there most of the time most of them because we don't think about connecting it Ecology is that study of the relationships or that interconnectedness between life Between the plants the animals all those living organisms and it actually swoops down and picks up the subsurface microbes Okay, it's all being driven by the Sun Sun comes down photosynthesis makes plants plants make roots roots put Put two things they slough off. They put organic matter. They put biomass. They put carbon. They put exudates into the soil, okay What happens next now this this is the one this is a landscape anywhere world This is what we would call a steady state and he goes around here. What if I pre-European sellers What would I look like right where I stand would have been a long-leaf pine community here? So I did learn something in Georgia Steve Long-leaf pine and the wire grass that was the lot what that meant that that was the climax community that was Just established itself and all those cycles nutrient cycling water cycle all that took place Functioned very well without the input of humans. Okay, but agricultural. We're over here We're constantly battling nature aren't we we're beating it back. What happens to a field if you don't farm it? Nature drives towards complexity. Well, we can learn about that These systems are function well because they have a lot of diversity and they have a minimal amount of disturbance Disturbance where it's over here. We we have monocultures. Don't we you raise cotton you raise peanuts You know up in the Midwest we raise corn and we raise soybean Well, we might throw in a year a week just to be diverse. Okay, but the point is we don't have much diversity So it affects our soil affects this trapping of the solar energy into the soil into the roots These systems tend to be bacterial driven if you measure the bio the bio biomass in there They have a lot of different bacteria. That's because we've created that habitat member. We're habitat builders We've created that habitat for them to fly the fungi those though They can't survive because we're doing things. We're constantly tilling the soil or putting materials on that to discourage them Okay, so think about that where these systems are just the opposite They tend to be fungily driven which again we've created a habitat because of the way it's being managed Well, we're trying to figure out what's in between now. You think arcade lamb. What's it's got to do with anything? So what happens what's the first weed that comes in to a new field that's been not farmed? Well, that was good Think about it generally. It's what a small small seeded grass or something Palmer Amaranth up home It would have been a ragweed or something like that Those weeds tend to be small seeded they put most of that energy that they get from the Sun Doesn't go into the root Its purpose is what I want to survive. I want to come back the next year So most of the energy that those early successional weeds come in It's going into the reproduction rather than into the root now. You think how does that apply? Well, how many of you have been out the unrcs people you've talked to a farmer So well, there's my cover crop that hen bit. There are all those winter weeds out there You think about yeah, have you all heard that? All right next time you say yeah, that's a cover out there, but we've changed focus We're not necessarily only looking at erosion control. We're trying to build and rejuvenate soils Your your your plan is only putting 20% of the energy of the Sun into the ground You're only feeding a very small Limited range of microbes. We're over here. I'm going to design my cover crops I'm going to put cover crop mixes in there that put 40 50 60% of that solar energy in there We're going to jump start The ecosystem the the successional process if you will think about it. That's really big You know, I love this quote by this dr. David Perry. He says Nature moves towards a more complex system a more diverse system more productive system a more resilient system Disturbance destroys complexity nature starts it up again Disturbance such as fire such as flood such as tillage Sends nature back sends the soil back and what nature tries to do build that resilience in there What's resilience? That's the ability to hold on to water in the middle of the summer when you need it We can do that Alright, let's think about this in the context of how the food web affects nutrients like me Now the words immobilization immobilization. Does that mean anything to anybody? I know when I checked That was probably one when I took the multiple guests. I mean choice test on my In my soil that was when I stumbled over because I knew they used to think about Mobilization is when that nutrient gets tied up in the residue, but I really didn't understand it very well But really what's going on is okay sunlight plant root organic matter gets eaten by bacteria fungi or root feeding nematodes which that's we'll talk more about those they eat that they incorporate that carbon Into their body and they reproduce and they do their thing. Okay But what happens is you got this protozoa. He's hungry. He goes over there and eats a bacteria All right the carbon the nitrogen everybody understand carbon the nitrogen ratio carbon the nitrogen is for every one nitrogen You got so many carbons so for bacteria For everyone nitrogen. He's got five carbons in his body So a protozoa eats him his carbon the nitrogen ratio is about 30 to 1 okay? So what's he do when he eats all the bacteria? He needs to meet his dietary carbon needs so to speak he's eating what too much nitrogen So what happens? He excretes that nitrogen. It's immol. It's mobilized and he puts out into the soil solution That right by that rhizosphere right by that that that that that root mass in the form It can take up either NH4 or or nitrate. It's plant available. That's mineralization immobilization is not necessarily tied up in the in the in the cells of the plant material but more it's tied up in the biology the microbes in the soil Same thing with a nematode in a fungi nematodes eat fungi They have like a I know it's like a 70 to 1 carbon the nitrogen ratio a fungi has like a 25 to 1 But see it's point. So we're doing we're relying on Micro excretion and I'll use that polite word there too. That's what mineral or provide nutrients to the soil And we can manage that all right. That's mineralization organic organisms consume each other They release an inorganic compound It's taken up either by the plant or it's taken back up by another organism and then it's stored into the body of the plant Well, that's different because when we apply fertilizers, when do we do that? We apply it all at once, don't we? Then we apply it in a very mobile form. It's either a nitrate or ammonia Very water soluble in the spring or sometimes in the fall up in the Midwest. What happens? They can be moved very easily by water You tie something up in a microbe and if you have a robust healthy soil those can be released over time Kind of a time-release thing. All right, let's think about it in the context of how a food web would help you in the for pest management So we got nematode here how many like root-feeding nematodes Okay, yeah, well, all right. That's that was a joke folks. Okay, well, we see we got them here We got a nematode here that's eating these guys, but we also have predatory nematodes predator-prey Relationships are huge. We need that in the soil. We need things to feed on other So this nematode eats this nematode or this one and what happens? Why do you have predator our root-feeding nematodes? It's because you've created the conditions in the soil form to thrive They tend to like poorly aerated soils. Okay, so what do we do? We till the soil we destroy the structure we create micro pores very and an aeration is reduced So we've created a habitat that allows them to out-compete that flourish and these poor predators here What's another thing we might do? My god, we're gonna get rid of all those nematodes. All right, so we're gonna do Steve We're gonna spray it with something Well, we don't have products that just target root-feeding nematodes. We got target products that target nematodes So they wipe out that whole layer so in order to have a good healthy food web you need to have all layers present So what happens is those root faders you've created the conditions for those root feeders to come back So they respond quicker they come back quicker where the prey has a little more challenge of it So you get this balance It's out of whack Another one here. This is one. I was I had an opportunity to go to Hawaii You know sometimes you got to suffer for the agency Steve, so I got to go to Hawaii for two weeks You know accent that was it was tough in the middle of summer Got to go to four islands. You know, believe me. It really was tough But anyway, we were working on the producer there And we were looking at his soil And we were looking you know Smelling it and feeling it and just doing our basic digging the hole with a shovel out there Ray and I and and he is talking about his system and he said one of the things he said he said, you know I have a I have a pretty bad nematode problem. Oh No, no, he said he had he sprayed a fungicide and we said why bet you got an nematode problem And we he said, well, yeah, how'd you know that he said well because Again this predator to the prey this balance of competition for resources. There are fungi Right here. It's a nematode. That's a fungi has a little lasso that fungi or nematode will swim in there That fungi I'll last to it choke him down and then eventually suck his enters out. It's what happened So that's real common So we dig in we disrupted that balance in the soil again We created a habitat that was unfavorable by the management systems that we do I gotta watch because I hadn't planned on doing this. I'm gonna go about 10 minutes Okay, all right, this is man-made soil Now, why would I say that I mean we would like to have soil will look like that by the way Yeah, that's pretty good looking stuff there. Nice good aggregation. We call that that cottage cheese effect You got water is gonna move down through that you got nice roots no sign of compacted layer. You got these nodules, or did you just that's not popcorn That's a nodules based on you've got a winter pea or something growing But the man the reason I say that is a hand that that that's attached to the man That made the decisions that influenced this soil It all is about management man's been doing no till for 30 years practicing cover crops You know use a multi-species cover crops when he can you know really managing things well to lead to that kind of Dissoil so that's why I tease about it's called man-made soil and what he's done He's followed these four basic principles I want to run through these real quick in the few minutes. I have left because if we can get farmers to do this We can start to build healthy soils at a resilient That absorb that runoff And hold on to it till the spring or to the summer when we need it the most So these are the principles we want to manage more about disturbing last Get diversity keep a living root growing and keeping it covered as much as possible. I hit pretty hard on tillage That's one of the most destructive things we can do Because it creates habitat Unfavorable habitat again, you're creating habitat, but only certain organisms can live under that and they tend to be the non-beneficial ones But tillage or tillage isn't the only one we got physical and chemical now. What why do we till the soil? They want to take a guess We control right we want to prepare a seed bed. We want to do something with that residue from last year We want to incorporate fertilizer Okay, but if I put this up You know why what does the tillage do to the soil? You know I read an article is in no-till farmer magazine over the winter And they said the guy set forth the idea that maybe we ought to put a label on every piece of tillage equipment Like we do on a pack of cigarettes Kind of a warning label says when you use this piece of equipment. It's going to destroy your soil aggregates For some reason we got the idea about pulling a piece of steel through the ground It's going to shove those soil particles together to form soil aggregates. That's not the way it works folks You need to have that biological glue. You need to have those bacteria those fungi in there That's what builds aggregates. So you have to create the habitat to allow that to happen Oh, yeah, by the way that piece of twillage is going to rapidly decompose all your organic matter Because we're going to chai up and slice and dice and we're going to expose it to excessive oxidation We're going to compact the soil. That's a good thing Yeah, we know how good that work, you know, so I've worked in our area Everybody followed the Lake Toledo Harbor thing or last year about the green algae, you know, they couldn't drink Well, I used to work my county. I was a proud DC. I helped contribute that Okay, because we spent so much time trying to prepare soils to no till through tillage Now you think I'm embarrassed to tell you that way. That's pretty because we knew there was a compacted layer down there That was restricting root penetration. That was restricting access To all that water and available down in the soil profile, but what we didn't realize is you cannot build aggregates through tillage it takes Biological processes it takes the hyphae of a Fungi going out and aligning those soil particles and it's Putting out these glues and it holds it together So while we create tillage and compaction through tillage a man, you know And the excess of heavy equipment we can only solve it biologically until we get that in our heads We'll never solve that problem Destroys habitat so it does all these negative things now so with that was the first thing you used Before you got in your tractor and you read that warning label. Maybe you would think twice What do I really need to do this trip or is there an alternative out there? I mentioned this earlier soil for soil 4.3 percent 17 years of monoculture 1.6 60 percent loss of soil organic matter on this site begin That's the average for across the country. We love the till you know what my why we like to till Give me ladies. There is nothing more manly Than sitting right there pulling that now come on guys done that just look like something You see this thing can you just see the testosterone dripping off this thing? You know there is nothing more mainly than that you know You know and then I go out there and try and convince you you could do the same thing with a tillage radish You know wimpy rat it went by the way. I not only break up compaction. I absorb nutrients into my end of the root fiber Also put out a little man aside to discourage those non-beneficial organisms Biological disturbance lack of diversity and rotation you grazers don't I thought I saw Eddie around here somewhere the grazers don't get off Now this is not Alabama. I bet there is not one pasture in Alabama looks like this Yeah Degraded we think we give grazers a big pass because there's green Green doesn't mean anything when it comes to soil health. You can still have compacted soils You can still have poor habitat because the uncontrolled by not controlling the hoof in the mouth of a cow Can lead to tremendous soil degradation? This is an equip contract Steve from from Georgia and this is again Quite the second we need to understand how soils function so we can properly rate make recommendations to solve problems you know Vince keeping a cow out of the stream. That's a good thing in it Got these nice Heavy use areas around these watering troughs. That's a good thing in it nice stream crossing Degraded pasture We just wasted $10,000 there because there is no way that this is gonna work You're still gonna get those nutrients runoff You can get as much if not more runoff from a pasture like this then you can from an eroded crop field Yeah, if I had more time I could demonstrate that but the point is This is where we should have began and then we could do these other practices We need to learn to man and that's a simple This is simple all you need to do is let the grass grow up and let it and let it rest. It's this is simple Chemical disturbance can be done by fertilizers manures pesticides. We need to keep in mind and again I'm not anti pesticide. I'm not anti fertilizer. Don't get me wrong But we need to understand what they do to the soil ecosystem when they're applied You know pesticides are nonspecific they take out everything so you need to recognize that so what you do You have to all right if I'm gonna I have this problem I'm gonna treat it, but then I immediately need to mitigate against that impact that You start to rebuild it same thing with fertilizers, you know They tend to discourage these beneficial relationships. He's a viscular mycorrhizal fungi You know Steve it took me about three weeks standing in front of a mirror to be able to say that correctly, you know But what it is it's really neat 80% of the plants that we use for food and fiber production benefit from this relationship, okay, so this this mycorrhizal will infect the root and Then it sends out a hyphae so it's in the root Sends out this hyphae it brings them water it brings in moisture it brings in zinc other micronutrients in Exchange the plant gives it carbohydrates and sugars and proteins to survive So in essence what we've done we've expanded this root mass of this plant exponentially Instead of touching two or three percent of the soil profile. We're up to seven or eight or nine percent of it So we're pulling in resources that were previously unavailable How do we do that? We create that habitat to allow them to rise And then maneuvers can you to do the same thing? All right. Let's already talked about this How many is this scarier? This is just a no-till Stanley County, North Carolina. I guess the point is managing heavy heavy cover crops can be done They're forgiving soils and it are easier to plan to second principle getting diversity This is this was really an eye-opener for me because do you realize that every plan? Puts juices into the soil exudates into the soil. I Didn't realize that there. This is your this is your class assignment next spring You go out and plant your corn whether it's in your sweet car sweet corn in your garden Or whether it's your neighbor's corn field of corn you go out there once about this tall You pluck out that corn plant you wipe off the root a little bit and you bite into that And that's gonna be like biting into a sugar cube That plant is generating sugars and carbohydrates and it's attracting a Realm of biology it's stimulating bacteria and fungi and it's got this specific range now You do that at the end of the summer and it's not going to be such a pleasant experience Okay, because the plant isn't is actively growing it doesn't need to stimulate that biology because it's on the downside of its life Okay, so that's really important, but the more every plant does that so the more diversity of plants you have the more Exudates you have the more diversity You have as for when it comes to micro I was reading a paper the other day it said a typical corn or Cropland field will have anywhere from two to three thousand different species of bacteria, okay a typical like a forest or a Long grass prairie something like that will have 25 or 30,000 different species So when you have that much more diversity you have a much more resilient system That's going to be providing those benefits throughout the growing season. This is kind of just give you an example that not all plants are Or the same this a different exudates a nitrogen concentration look at a white clovers got a lot of Nitrate in it compared to the lupin Again, just to kind of show you that not everything all all plants are the same And think about here. We need to think about the more diversity we have above ground The more diversity will have below ground How do we do that now? How many farmers we got in here? Couple of you now one way to do that's by adding perennial grasses at the end of the road How many are ready to get start to get in the haymaking business Now we're not going to do that. Now. That's a good way to do it. Don't get me wrong That is an excellent way to do it by adding the length in your rotation Putting you know perennials in there, but really what we need to do is think about adding more plants in The rotation in these so how are we gonna do that through cover crops through cover crops now How do we judge whether cover crop is successful or not how much it grows above the ground, right? But you think about here We've got a soil that has not seen the exudates from a cover crop mix has got crimson clover and hairy vetch And maybe some radishes in forever So maybe those radishes only grow six eight ten weeks There's still you have the most plant development is below ground the first part of it. It's putting those exudates. It's growing Dynamically so maybe we need to rethink our success and think well, maybe if that's only there for a while six eight ten weeks We ought to be able to Get some benefit out of that And again, you need to think about getting diversity need to add make sure you get plants representing different groups what we've done is Try to break it down simple, you know, you got warm season grasses warm season broadleaves cool season grasses cool season broadleaves Make sure your rotation Includes that and if it doesn't then use cover crops that fall into that. What am I talking about? This is what the warm season grasses are Warm season broadleaves. I'm kind of hurrying here because I want to get to something Race tire that's raised soil right there Yeah, anyway, that's that's what they look like But what we need to do is think about mimicking nature If you would go out into a prairie and look and measure some square unit you would find 50-25 different plant species and you got all this diversity all these exudates going in there at different times through the growing season Same thing for a forest Some work done by Dr. Tillman up in Minnesota shows that you know once you get about seven or eight different species growing You produce more biomass than a monoculture And the same thing in more functional groups the cool season the warm season the broadleaves and and so forth The more of those that are represented in your rotation again more biomass is being produced Some work done out of the University of Michigan shows that what's that do on the biology? Well, the more species the more biology they weighed using a fossil fossil-elipid fatty acid test they just measured the biology in the soil and it came up and Then it also talks about respiration the more biology the more energy the more work being done, okay? Diversity diversity diversity Oops one more point and I'll shut up here. All right root mass This one is a no-brainer folks. We need to learn how to keep a living root growing year-round as long as possible Why because you got that much more exudates that much more biology that much more By a carbon being put into the soil this is some Work which shows here's a corn plant plant it grow it about 110 days produces about 900 to a thousand pounds of biomass Root mass in that top four or five inches, okay? Cotton down here soy beans about half of that Here we got a cover crop we plant in that time of the year When you're not even using the field you put in a hairy vetch cereal rye crimson clover mix something like that in that top Four or five inches you can produce Alma over a ton of root mass. This is based on Russell data out of North Carolina, but my point is we're putting all this plant roots all these exudates feeding all this biology In a time of the year when you're at the coffee shop you think about that How do we do that? We need to hurry up and get that done. I want to show this two more slides That's not like Ray here. How are we gonna get that done? This is way too many slides We can fly it on you guys familiar with that That's good. You can fly it on Nice cover. You got to watch your seeding rates. This is some work done out of Penn State They're going in a lay-by-time put nitrogen on He's putting his cover crops eat. That's what it looks like You know, here's another one high-boy cedar That's what we're talking about way. They're going in they're going down between rows of corn these things drop down between the corn And they're seeding the cover crop. That's what it looks like going through the field that corn's mature It's not you know, we saw from your your your work doctor or to tease that you know the plant sets down We're not using that moisture goes in there at harvest. We're doing this at the end of You know whenever in August 1st of September down here might be a little later Here's one y'all would be real applicable for Alabama. That's cotton right I want to make sure he's He's defoliating his cotton. He's putting a cover crop on at that time. This is what it looks like never used it again Because he his popper wasn't big enough. So actually he's doing that process. He's just using a different thing But my point is once farmers we can get fence farmers. This is a good idea. They'll come up with their own This is one this guy. These are lawnmower blades He decided to whack the top out of his corn at the end of the cropping season He could get that three or four week jump on things He didn't get OSHA approval on that one But but again, but my point is once you can convince a farmer. It's a good idea They'll make it work. Okay, and then with that I'm gonna be quiet I Need one you need to pick the right cover crop the rights cultivars and You know you something like I think they were using just some cereal right and the basic what happens It just kind of goes you know pop up and grow and it almost hit like a Hate these were dormancy But it just won't grow very much and then when you cut the top out of it It'll release and let that some kind of sunlight come back in there And then a lot of times your corn will lose its leaves and stuff throughout the year too. So Again, it's just an idea Out there, but it's being I think you're gonna hear more about intercropping systems like that growing next year's crop and Well, this one's growing especially with cover crops because what you gain and I can't remember who showed that information Maybe it was dr. Thompson over here that about the earlier growth or something the earlier you plant it The more biomass you get I mean that's huge You know you're gaining three or four weeks in the fall, you know, you can really gain a lot of biomass there, so Harry that's a crank out some nitrogen and I know people are concerned about hard seed You know and you think about it the problem with cover crops is we're just using what's been given to us We have not you know look about getting which I go back to the presentation on the corn varieties And how much we've improved varieties and how better they are because genetics has been used to improve them We have not done that with cover crop We have not tried to breed cover crops to do specific things And I really think that's the next generation of trying to find a hairy vetch. It doesn't have such a hard seat I mean, there's tons of seed up around that's old seed that just didn't maybe necessarily produce that's much whatever That they were desirable, but may have that characteristic, so I think that's the next wave of Development in that type of thing Yeah, one thing I'm just an OBS or don't that's pretty much my I was happy to get out that I appreciate the Comment there, but but yeah, if you go to the NRCS is national website And you go to a called and you'll see a thing called unlock the secret of the soil and there's a whole ray of things There's a lot of videos know we went through and hired somebody went out and interviewed like 18 researchers from around the country He did some really nice videos for us about explaining, you know in three minutes Some of the concepts that we're talking about and they're really they're really good. So but with that, oh Give you this all right