 South Dakota's educational effort to raise awareness about the importance of soil health continues. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service entered into a cooperative agreement with the South Dakota No-Tel Association and I grow South Dakota State University Extension for delivering these seminars with the latest soil health and productivity technology to South Dakota farmers and ranchers. I'm going to ask you guys a question. I asked a group last night and I started to ask this every time I go because I want us to realize how the premise of agriculture was built on the wrong premise. Here's my question to the audience. I mean any of you whether it was your mom, your dad, relatives, professor, people that influenced in your life that hey your job is to farm a nature's image, to work with it, to collaborate with it, to synergize with it. Oh, and this word, nurture it. Not to use control and command, to force it to a being choosing, with tillage, herbicides, fertilizers, and these other tools we use. How many taught you that? Raise your hand. I go everywhere in the country and I ask the same thing. There's a reason for it. Myself was taught that to force and to control, not to understand it. After eight years of college, that's what I was taught. Why is this coming up now? Ladies and gentlemen, as I travel all over the country, producers are dealing with the stress, financial stress, climatic stress, and the cost of influence. This movement, the soil health movement, is caused by costly inputs. The things in the dry agriculture and the farmers and the producers, as we speak, are going broke. And they went broke under my tutelage. Some of the ones that I worked in in Iowa. Let me give you an example. You guys can see me where I came from. I grew up in New Mexico. I grew up in New Mexico. It was a very brittle environment, 18 inches north of Santa Fe. Started my career there, went to the southern part as a technician, and then moved to Missouri. So I went to Missouri for five years. Seven years in New Mexico, five years in Missouri. Picked up a wife, Missouri. Good way to go. Worked in Oregon, and now North Carolina. I say, well, that boy can't do the job. But here's why I started questioning where we're at, is when my producer, one of my producers, my friend, personal friend, was going broke, could not bring the family, this son, into the operation. Is it something wrong? Why do we need 2034,000 acres to survive? Why can't we survive on a couple hundred acres? Why can't we do that? What I found out is that my producer was destroying the soil in Idaho, great soils, cheap water, and still could not bring the son into the operation. And the worst part about it is, here I went to eight years of school, couldn't help it. I was taught out of context, and what we're going to learn today is how to emulate, to farm, and interest in, is how to work with it. And I want to select simply, in fact this group is pretty small, Paul. I'm wondering if we can fit and watch everybody come up here. In fact we might do that. Okay, the people in the last rows, the last three or four rows, want you to stand up, come on, stand up, and what you're going to see is demonstration. Stand up. Paul, let's go ahead and still do this anyway. But here's my point. I want to show you this demonstration. I'm going to show you about soil, we're going to talk about soil culture, and how our understanding and our soils put into it. Come on, come up further. It's going to circle around here. It makes us very, very fragile. We're going to talk about that. Come up here guys, come around here. I'm going to select some of you. Ah, you look like a guy on the select. David, do you want to help? Yeah, come here guys. Come on, let's get my, you nervous? Yeah, you don't have to speak. That's cool. And, oh, homeschoolers. You've got a couple homeschoolers now. Come here guys, you guys are going to help us. We have a little, you think you can kind of reach this to do this? I think you can, huh? Come here, you're going to help us, okay? Jeff, you go sit right here, you're going to move a little while until you come to the floor, right there. You guys sit right here. You guys, now David, do the agribusiness test, okay? Okay, now, here's the thing. Why were we going broke? Why was my producer going broke? And I can help you. Ladies and gentlemen, while I'm going to talk to you today, I was not taught in college. Even though the information has been around for years and years, it's been there that it was not taught to us. I don't care how bright, how much years of college you went to, if you have the wrong filters, the wrong map, you still end up going into the wrong destination. They were going to get the right map, the right filters, the right way of looking at nature, the way we start is this demonstration. I cannot get, I can't even talk to you about raising, I can't talk to you about zero-till, I can't talk about the tools until we understand, okay? Here's how it's going to work out, David. Are you ready? This is called the Sling and Advocates Stability Test. It is one indicator, only one indicator of cell health. There are many indicators. As you go to a doctor, because you're a complex system, they use different sampling. They do blood samples, they do urine samples, they do cat scans, they do all kinds of indicators, look at all kinds of indicators to determine health, to determine function. These are some of the ones that we're going to use today. You can do this on your operation, you can do this on your ranch, you can do this on your field. It's pretty darn simple. All you do is air dry the plugs and drop it in water to explain how this works. This is a zero-till, oh, this one, North Carolina soil, six and a half percent organic matter. This is the neighbor, David. David, that's a neighbor, half a percent organic matter. Those are the same soils. Can you guys see that? Let's get this thing going. Okay, we're going to get this going here. Did you move? Put that here. Just move along the cord so we can show you, so just in case everybody can't see. Go ahead and do that. You want to get the phone. We had this all planned out. Okay, there you go. No, it's the other way around. There you go. He'll work on that. Okay, now, David, this is our beloved South Dakota soil. Yeah, clean management on those two. These are ceaseless, sandy clay loans. Beadmont soils, inherently poor soils. They're not wonderful soils. They're not Dakota soils. Okay, and these are, that one's zero-till. The native organic matter in North Carolina is three percent. That one's six and a half. Both of these, he covered off for 30 years. He rolls cover crops this high. He's been doing it for 30 years. He no longer uses an inorganic nitrogen in his operation. He no longer uses phosphorus. He has not used phosphorus for a long time. He has gone down from five herbicides down to one herbicide. He's almost organic, no tip. It's not that he wants to be. Do you see the color difference? Can you believe those farms are a mile apart? Just a mile apart? It's the understanding that's different on these noisy producers. Excellent. Now, let's get ready to drop them in. Now, when I go to an operation, I like to have two manes jars, a salsa jar for two screens, a 30-minute conversation, a shovel. This demonstration shows me a lot about your operation. Let's go ahead and gently drop in. This is what's going to happen. What is going to rush in to fill the pour spaces? We don't want it to fall apart. If it starts falling apart, that means it's slaking. Sharks are falling up. The pours are collapsing. No pours. No porosity. No infiltration. Nobody with me. We don't want it to fall apart. We want it to hold its integrity. Let's go ahead and drop them in gently. Let's see what happens in this system. Now, look at these soils. I'll remember, I tell you, these are apparently poor soils. This is the conventional. This is the non-till. Let's compare. This is what I call a high stress system. Some people in colleges use disturbance. I like to learn stress. This is the high stress. This is the low stress. If I took a prairie soil, a native prairie, a native forest, I would drop them. They would be clear. They would not fall apart. This one is starting to fall apart and it'll get and see chunks. And when you do the task, you're actually supposed to create some sonification or some disturbance and then actually scientists will measure that. This one, these two systems are a high stress system. Depending on fertilizer, depending on high weed that has more weeds, bacteria-driven system. This is a bacteria-driven system. This is a balanced system. This soil, for every 1% of organic matter, will increase your water holding capacity from 17 to 25,000 more gallons. For every 1% of organic matter that you build, you can hold that much more water. Now, here's the thing. The soil food web is not intact in this one. This one's intact. More balance of fungus and bacteria. Now, I have an audience question for the audience. David, why is each two systems falling apart? What is the tillage doing to that system? Audience, help them out. We need to understand this. If we do not understand this, how are we going to lead ourselves to some of these inputs? Excellent. How do we do that? What happens to this system, ecologically? What happens? What does tillage do? It speeds up the residue decomposition. When you do tillage, you screw up these bacteria. The scientists call them R-strategists or copotrophic bacteria. They're designed to be in the system. They are there in the system for a purpose. When a power plant, when residue, they multiply. They're called opportunist bacteria. But when you till, you feed them the house. They eat the organic matter. They eat the glues. They eat the biotics and mentonages that you work so hard to build. So in other words, you cause the soil to cannibalize itself. You stimulate secondary succession. When you run that disk, you wake up those bacteria. They start eating the house. I had an old rancher say, Ray, I'm not going to stop disking. Because when I disk, I release these nutrients. He's right. After that whole process, the microbes die. They release nitrates. He said, I'm not going to stop that. He said, yes, you burn the house down to a horrible hot dog. Why don't you just turn the grill on? You just burn the house down. So one event, you not only brought weed seeds to the top of the surface, and you fed the weeds. The weeds love nitrate. They love bacterial dominant soils. This soil is bacteria dominant. It cannot handle the stress. It has more prone to disease. Here's the total difference system. These soils are no longer the same. So let's make this straight. Tillage is not our friend. Tillage is not our friend. Nature does not till. What does nature use, Phil, as its tillage equipment? The plugs, earthworms, the roots. Biologically, they do it. Earthworms can move 12 to 18 tons of soil in a year. Or every acre, by themselves. If you know what I like about the jet, they don't complain. You don't have to put diesel in them. Earthworms will do the changing. Now, look what happens here. Now, I'm going to ask Tanner to break this open. Because you know what people are saying? You conclude that, how come you didn't follow? I bought a banter and put a brick in it. Why do I have to put some Missouri tillage in it? You know what I'm saying? You go here. I'm going to open that up. The water going all the way through there. They soak all the way through. Don't think so, buddy. So good. They soak all the way through. You know you can put these plugs from home and it's super. And they won't fall apart. Those biotic looms created by fungus, bacteria, and all of the organisms created those looms. Who makes organic matter? The plants and the organisms. If we take the plant and organisms out, what do we have, audience? If I take plants out and the organisms out, what do you have? Geology. Biology. The moment you say biology, the plants and microorganisms are not called soil. Let's go on this mission. I think you guys should play with this one. Hey, so everybody with me. When you stir the soil, you run a disc, stir up the organisms, and they feed on the house. As farmers say, a ray of attention at the top. You don't understand they're on the top two or three inches. Now, let's see the impact of that. This is food coloring. You're going to pour into that. You're going to see them as your brother. Oh, it's not your brother. It's your friend. That's better. That's what you're doing. This is zero till. This is convention. This is a low-stress system. High tillage. This is a low-stress system. More diversity. Very low diversity. This is farming like nature. This is what we're going to typically do. We're going to pour. We're going to see which one allows the water to move quicker. And set, go. Oh, that is a 1,000-year rainstorm. Worked out beautiful. The no-till. How come the no-till allowed the water to go in, Keith? You know why you have the internet? So we could call on you. You know why everybody's so comfortable? I didn't know this years ago. So what's my hope about that? So Keith, why does the no-till allow the water to go in and the conventional model? I thought if you kill the soil and get it more fluffy, I would allow more air to go in, right, Lerner? That's what we were taught. You've destroyed the biotic blues in the C-19 ages to keep the particles and create the pore space. It's called aggregates. The tillage destroys the micro-aggregates. I mean, the macro-aggregates. It does not destroy the micro-aggregates. This one has the macro-aggregates. The big pore space is intact. You see the difference now? What's your average rainfall here, 15 to 16? I told the EPA we do not have a runoff problem. We have an infiltration problem. Think about this. This is only 8 to 10 inches. If it's coming from the sky at 50, 20 miles per hour, what do you think happens then? And you have no aggregate stability. You have no biotic blues. This has been destroying new tillage off of CO2. Grandpa's arm is up in the atmosphere. Our job is to bring the back and clean the blues. Now, we've got another demonstration. You're going to help. Oh, you like this, don't you? Okay, now here, I'll let you guys do this. Stand right here. And there, and there. Jack, you hold down, okay? Oh, do you want to be the squirt? David, you can be the squirt. Okay, guys. You're going to hold this. You're going to be through the rain cloud. You like that? Okay, you stand on the other side. Okay. He's got something else. I'll let you stand right here, okay? What you're going to do is you're going to pour, and you're going to squeeze right in. Don't take that off. Okay, we're going to see what a raindrop does. Okay, you guys see, how many of you have you seen a big one? Oh, scorners of dust. You've seen that, right? You have an experience in here. How come our rivers look like chocolate? This demonstration is going to show you what happens, why they look like chocolate and why we have dust all over them. What happens when the aggregate gets destroyed. Remember, these glues only last 27 days in a typical agro-ecosystem. 27 days. So we have to be building glues all the time. Let's go ahead and make it rain, guys. Let's squirt it. Oh, look at that. Look at the conventional. We'll raise it up a little bit. Very good. Excellent. Stop there. Excellent. Now let's raise those guys really high. That's good. When the biotic glues are gone, you've killed the particles, the clay particles are no longer intact. When it comes, and it blows, and the water carries it from miles down the stream. So it's not only stream bank erosion, but the field is taking all these clays, the suspended clay particles of sand, and look at here. Now guys, which one would you like to drink out of? That one, huh? And it's all in the way you understand the system and the way you farm in your ranch changes the soil ecosystem. Here's the number one thing I want you guys to learn today, guys. The soil is alive. It is a living ecosystem. Now do you guys want to see another demonstration? Yeah. Let's do one more. Guys, I'm going to let you do this, okay? Here's your corn stock. I'm going to show you the real fertilizer of the soil. Some of us think the real fertilizer of the soil comes in a bag called 4600. Don't we? That's what we think. We think the real fertilizer is in the bag. Let's just get it. I'm going to show you the real fertilizer. It's called liquid carbon. This is what drives the soil system. This is called the scum test. What we're going to have these two guys do is I want you to get that and I want you to soak it and move it around like this, okay, Jack? I think it's a huge mess. Right? You can do that. Go ahead and dump it in there. Move it around. You've got to be able to dig your wrists. Do that excellent. Up and down. Okay. Why would a plant, you're going to see a scum. You'll see this little white film. Why would plants be of 30 to 50% of their energy to leak these substances? Keep going. You've got to do a little more. Now you're going to have to get inside of here where you see the scum. Okay, let's pull this aside. Okay, you see that scum? You guys see that scum? Have a look. One of the films is liquid, carbon, mammalian created by fungus. It is the compounds that leak from the plant. It's got acids in there. They are sugars, proteins, carbohydrates, nucleoside, all these cool chemicals leak into the soil that feed the microorganisms. Why would microplants leak 30 to 50% of all the energy? Why would they do that? It's a statement of the story. And why would they do that? Perfect. What the heck? It's like being taxed 50%. I said, okay, you're going to work for me, but I'm going to keep you only 50%. Some of you are saying what you're talking about. Nobody really does that. Why would plants give that much energy back to the soil? What do they want out of this? Self-preservation. They want nutrients. There's no way we can, plants can pull the phosphorus out of the rock. It's these organisms, it's bunkers that release these cool phosphatase that help bring phosphorus out of the rock. They'll bring zinc. These acids that leak make phosphorus soluble. Soils are nutrient deserts. And the way you start this system is with a living plant. Once you understand soils, cover crops are not optional. They are not optional. They are the ones that feed the system and feed the microbes. Everybody with me is taking liquid sun, and this is what it is, and it stores its organic matter. And it's the microbes and the plants do this, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody with me? If you're not doing this, your system is fragile and is dependent on high chemical inputs. Nitrogen is useful for protein synthesis, but what really drives the soil is carbon. Carbon, carbon, carbon. Where do we get carbon from? Plants, plants, manure, compost, carbon. Soil wants carbon. Carbon is a fertilizer bag. It prefers this. Everybody with me? Give these guys a hand. Let's sit down. Any questions about this demonstration? This is why I moved my cows correctly. If I take too much from here, I impact this. If you take too much, it doesn't put the energy back. That's the medicine to survive. I want to build glues. This is what builds the glues. Oh, by the way, as soon as this goes down a little bit, or crazy, would I raise a cover crop field with no tilt or one with conventional? What will happen in this field with no structure? Stand. Beds will get compacted. If I have cover crops, then I have the animals there. This one has more structure. People that go to zero tilt start using the covers. You call it the pivot starts right on the top of the surface. OK, we're ready? OK, let's get going. Is that almost empty right there? OK. OK, let's get going. Now you see why I do the demonstrations first? I have to do the demonstrations first. You won't get it any other way. You have to be on this one of your lead tricks. And that's what I had to go through that whole experience myself. Come on, computer. OK, this is one of those days where there we go. Later on today, maybe we can do this demonstration. We can have two people, a person, and I usually like to do this, get a person. The water has a long filter through. Get your two fingers. Once you somebody from the audience, I want you to try and touch the bottom of the plastic. And guess which one will give you more resistance? We'll do that. OK, here we go. Nothing seems to be working today. Come on. Gabe, I hope you have a better success than I do here. You know what I'm going to do? Start it over again. I apologize, but. My Mac is having a problem. You're not supposed to be having those kind of things here. Come on. Let's see what happens. OK, these are the seven principles that we're going to talk about today. And that you will apply on your operation. These are the seven principles that apply. When I go out of the country, these are the filters that I go through. The principles I apply. I want you to focus on principles. When you go from one state to the other states, the principles of ecology still apply, ladies and gentlemen. It does not stop at the border. Every time I'm here, farmers from interest rate won't work here. You have soil, don't you? You have living, so living ecosystem, isn't it? So the principles apply everywhere. Here's the first one. This is very critical. Understand your ecological and social context. Context, context, context. This is the right map. Be cognizant of your context. Your ranch, your farm was hewn out of the prairie and the forest. Understand your context. And socially, us, we impact the resource, which leads to this one. This is a new one, Bill. I like this one. And I've noticed that farmers and ranchers in the country apply, indirectly, these principles called, apply the seven habits of highly effective people. Remember that book, Stephen Covey's book? It came out years ago, 10 years ago? I told my brother-in-law, I said, brother-in-law, I need to be more effective. I got too many things on my plate. How do I become more effective? He says, what book would you recommend? He's very well read. He said that I would recommend this book, because it gives you the proper context. It gives you the integrity to be able to carry out the other principles we're talking about. It is you, it is us who impact the resource. People that are the top ranchers and farmers are applying that. We'll talk about that. Other one is, reduce chemical and biological disturbance. Stress. Be careful with your fertilizer. Be careful with your herbicide. Be careful with your insecticides. They cause stress in the system, because they're non-selective. You've got to be careful with them. Cover the soil all the time, all the time. Grow a living root. Synergize with diversity. Cover crops and rotation. And the other one that a lot of people can't do is integrate animals. Nature does not farm without animals. Let's talk about the context when we're out. I want you to focus on principles. Ladies and gentlemen, nature is incredibly complex. It's incredibly complex. We would never know all the nuances of it. But if we can follow the principles, watch patterns, then we've got to think of how to operate with it, learn how to work with it. Here's the biggest problem. Do you have that gate? That's life. Do you use that slide? Yeah. This is the big problem right here. It's the way we look at it. Our parent, our filter, it's the way we look at nature. That's the biggest issue. Here's the other issue. It's difficult to educate a man if his check depends upon it. We have all vested interests. It's my research. It's my performance. It's me making selling inputs. Everybody has vested interests, but we're not looking at the resource. It is hard to teach a man when his check depends upon it. OK, I'm going to show you about the exposures we're going to talk about. What makes things fragile? Nature is antifragile. Our operations are fragile. What I'm talking about is we're talking about exposure in nature. There are fragile exposures, robust and antifragile. Most of our farms are in a fragile situation. Gabe Brown's farm and ranch is robust, and we'll talk about that. Nature is antifragile. It deals with biological and economic systems. It also deals with rules. People that only obey the rules are a fragile people. People that are robust society are principally-minded people, but people that have virtue are antifragile people. Same thing with ethics. This works for ecological systems. It works for social systems. People with no skin in the game in our country. Where are we at? Do we have skin in the game? Do we have no skin in the game? Or we have people with soles in the game. Ladies and gentlemen, what makes our farms a very fragile is that a majority of us don't have soles in the game. Your soles are not personal to you. We'll talk about that. It has to be personal. This is the journey where we want to mimic nature's way to be business. We have some farms arranged that are here, but a majority are here. We'll talk about that. I'm going to talk a little bit more about fragile and robust. This is a robust system. That is not. Why is an iPad very fragile? Why is this robust and this is fragile? The principle, this one takes a lot of resource to maintain. Takes a huge infrastructure to maintain it. This one doesn't take much to maintain, does it? How about this tractor? Takes huge amounts of resources, energy, and its component. This is dependent on this huge infrastructure. Here's an Amish hay wagon. This one is more robust. This one is more fragile because it's dependent on a very limited, finite resource called oil. OK? Now, why should we care? 2012, 60 million. There was in China in 2012. They have a 60-mile pilot. People were stuck in the car for 10 days. And the people in China said, we didn't care. We wouldn't care. We wouldn't live like Americans. Our whole agriculture depends on this. It is complicated. It is fragile. I want my farm and ranch to be dependent on my soil. When they have a problem older in Louisiana, how long did it take the government to get water to the people? Five solid days. How many of you want to put your ranch in operation and depend on the government place you're in? How would you like to be dependent solely on your soil? And your understanding and making it resilient? I don't want to be dependent on that. And what we're talking about, Gabe and I are going to talk about, is how we can be less dependent on that. That's what makes our system fragile, our farm systems. Not only that, because it's driven by this. What kills us is logistics. It's the logistics of the farm and the operation that kills you every day. In the winny battle, you have to have the proper logistics. In no manner do you have all the cool vision and strategy. That is cool. Leaders say, leaders win through logistics. You can have vision. Sure, strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets. And at the right time, at the right place. In other words, you must win through superior logistics. Win you far too many acres. The logistics becomes complicated. It becomes more costly. It doesn't matter how brilliant your vision is. If you can't get soldiers, weapons, and vehicles, and gasoline, and the chow, and the boots, and the right people, you're going to fall apart. You know what's going to happen to Amazon.com and all these dot-coms? They have a logistic nightmare. It's run by oil and energy. So the thing is, how do we do our ranch and our operations logistically? We go bring hay, we bring it to the barn, and we're moving it all the time logistically, using huge amounts of inputs by the cow who will get to feed themselves. It's how you manage business. By the way, Alexander, you know what he used to call these guys, the logisticists, are of a humorless lot. They know if my campaign fails, they're the first ones I kill. Logistics, how are you doing with your business, your farm, your operation logistically? This is our Achilles' Heels, water and energy, huh? Tell me. We're doing so good. Our soils, this is when I cross the country. Soils are naked, hungry, thirsty, and running the fever. This is impacting our whole farming and operations. It's changed the climate. It's impacted a lot of our water. It's affected our health. We need to change this. But you can only change it when it becomes personal to you. See, if your soils are not personal, when you go to Dr. Beck's, does Dr. Beck let you dig the soil without permission? No, those soils are personal to him. You've got to be there. Your ranch has to be personal to you. Your soils have to be personal, not informational knowing. This is what's happened when you have the wrong map, the wrong strategy, the wrong premise. This is Colorado in January the 12th, 2014. This is 1935. Why are we still there? Look at here. That's Arkansas this year. That is Arkansas. It's amazing. When I showed this to the EPA, I said, EPA, our ranches and farms, our conservation plans here, our rivers and lakes are filled with conservation plants and nutrient management plants. We're good at putting components, but we're not good at systems thinking. Our lakes and rivers are filled with conservation plants, but lacking crystal clear understanding. Our soils have degraded all over the country, all over the planet. Look at them, they're degraded, very degraded, degraded. Here's what we're going to talk about. It's wholeness, interconnectedness. Everything is connected on a farm in operation. When you go out there and spray, do you understand that? What beneficials keep the past in check is ecology, everything's connected, plants, humans, all of us. If I could use one word to be emblematic of soil health, it would be one word, it would be called bio mimicry. How many of you know what the word bio mimicry is? Mark, have you ever heard of that? It's mimic the biology, mimic nature, all the way being stated, farm in nature's image. When you get a chance to go on to earth, I'm Ted, and type the word bio mimicry. It is phenomenal to listen. We have done the biggest technology gauge by watching nature bio mimicry. 3.8 billion years of research and development, 10 to 30 million species, well-adapted solutions. Let's learn from the biology how we can change our operation. Engineers learn how to do velcro by mimicking a weed and have a little hook. He made millions of dollars by using the bird that make velcro. Here's another one, bio mimicry. Scientists are using shark skins and they put it on a barge to reduce the friction. By doing this, 2,000 tons of fuel are saved by year just by putting and emulating the shark skin and putting on boats. We are building buildings. This building was done in Zimbabwe, mimicking termite mounds. And the ventilation system, by using that, has saved 90% on air conditioning. Bio mimicry, how do we learn how to fly? Gary? Why do you know birds? Or why was it because Roger was smoking cover crops? Scientists, bio mimicry, how do we do this with a range? Same way, bio mimicry. We're going to talk about that. Bio mimicry has been around for a long time. And the book of Job says, ask the beast and they will teach you. The birds of heaven will tell you it's been in our front of our face for years. Bio mimicry, the prairie in the forest. What makes the prairie in the forest? She argues, we should farm like the prairie in the forest. Audience, what is the prairie in the forest doing? That's so phenomenal. What does it do? Jill? Hit the, and then is it going to receive? Is there animals in both of the systems? Absolutely. Look how complex it's some of the systems it does. It's self-maintaining, predator insects, the beneficials control themselves. It's self-renewing, it's self-organizing. It does all these services that we talk about. Oh, by the way, it's like I messed up here. You're probably saying, well, Ray, where did you make this up? Although applications and principles or patterns from nature and agriculture are well recognized, but they're rarely applied. All the researchers, sorry about the slide, all kinds of researchers have been thinking this for years. Let me give you an example here. Look at here, 1961, I was born in 1961. This is the range in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This is the way it looked in 1961, a short, steep prairie. Look what happens when we overgraged and used the wrong tools. It went from here to here. And then guess what BLM and the Forest Service did? Let's say, hey, let's take the cows out. We did a shift. We did a regime shift. This is how I like to think about this in natural systems. Think of this as a giant basin. This is the energy fields that are controlling and moving the natural system. It is the food web. All the complex ecosystem services, this ball represents nutrient cycling, water cycling, all of these complex elegant systems in the background moving, all these. It shifted from here to here. When it shifts like that, ecologists call this a regime shift. It crossed this threshold. And it went from here to here. In a good natural system, the bottom of the basin is equilibrium. This system is more resilient towards drought, better at nutrient cycling. Better for the water cycle. All these services we talked about. This one, shift completely different structure. It shifted. It was done through the management. By not managing the cows correctly and the animals, it's shift from this basin to this basin. And it's hard to bring it back here. Once it goes to here, it is difficult. What is that? Mesquite. Those are mesquite. Do you know mesquite are nitrogen fixers? Look how much bare ground how it shifted. Because we didn't manage the biology, the microbes. Same thing with the system here. This one here, notice how big the basin is. The bigger the basin, the more resilient it is. The smaller the basin, the less resilient. This one is resilient. Our farms and ranches are less resilient. It crossed the threshold. Why? This system is low stress, high diversity, high human inputs, low human inputs, high functioning ecosystem services. Our operations are high stress, low diversity, high human inputs, disrupted ecosystem services. Let's take it down to the soil level. Our soils, most of us do not realize our soils were like this. They have shifted here. This system is different from this system. You cannot compare good no-till systems with a conventional system. They're total different regime shifts, total different system, total different animal. This one is bacteria dominant. This one has all the soil food we've attacked. This one does not. This one cannot handle droughts. This one's leaky. It is a different threshold. It passed a different threshold. And let's talk about how that happens when we don't manage things properly. Look at this when you don't even manage the way you put your equipment out. Non-disturb, low disturbance drill, high disturbance drill, look at the disc arrow, or we'll plow. Why she would care. But look at the difference. When you manage and you do things correctly, even with a drill, how does it affect, especially in these systems? Look at this one here. Look at the CO2. Look at the evaporation, water evaporation. Just by that little bit of disturbance, how it impacted that soil. How many have sandy soils on your farm ranch? Hey, how do we increase the canonical exchange capacity on these soils? That is an aggregate of sand done by fused by biology. See the color right here? That is sand that is coated by those organo mineral complexes. Now, that aggregate can regulate temperature, pH, make a potential. Now I have better cationic electroconductivity. I have better cation exchange. This was done biologically. Those sand particles now are coated. I have seen in North Carolina, there's really dark film with cover crops and no tillage. One tillage event will destroy that aggregate. One tillage event will destroy that aggregate. And the organisms will eat the glues and take the coatings off that. This is what we want. That is an aggregate. I fully appreciate the potential. Now, let's show you what happens when you have proper aggregate stability. You really need to be out here during the most intense thunderstorms over the year. Since most people aren't willing to do that. This is taken by Virginia. This is a rain simulator. This is Chris Lawrence. Look what happens when the aggregate's destroyed. On the right, we start with a slice of intact surface soil from a long-term no-till field. This soil is not only protected with a mulch of cover crop residue. It also has a stable porous run structure. Years ago, as a kid, I remember, you know, you get these big, heavy thunderstorms in the summer and it would just wash the field and you'd end up with mud down the road. And I'm talking about the mud that you'd go over there with a skid loader and scoop out the way so the cars could go down the road. What I'm seeing now is I'm seeing these heavy rainfalls and I'm barely seeing a triple coming out of the field. After we simulate an extremely intense thunderstorm for five minutes, the differences are obvious. Most of the water we apply to this soil has run off into this jar, carrying away with it a thin, but very significant layer of top soil. It's about a dime's thickness is 10 to 15 tons of soils eroded per acre. Now look what happened here. It's a very intense rainfall to this bare-tilled soil. In an hour. We've been harvested very little for future plant use. What happened? The biotic blues are gone. This no-till soil has absorbed virtually every drop of water we apply. What will run off is clear. The bottom line is pretty simple. If you want to harvest more rain like these no-till harvest are doing, keep your soil covered on top and make it a sponge underneath it. Let's look at our rangeland. How about our range and grass and pasture land? It continues to graze pasture versus the rotation of graze pasture. You can really see the difference. You actually have to be out there during the heaviest thunderstorm of the year. Here's the rainfall simulator to demonstrate the impact. Look at the overgrazed. The rangeland versus rangeland on pasture surfaces. These pasture samples were collected from actual pastures just down the road from each other. One represents continuous overstock to overgraze pasture. The other represents a rotation like graze to the rest of pasture. All rainfall around is funneled into a collection jug from the demonstration table. This allows us to visually compare both the volume and clarity of the rangeland. Most important, ensuring we have managed water with rotational grazing, particularly during the summer, we have more water infiltration because we have a better cover on the ground. Essentially, the cover intercepts the water particles and allows it to enter into the ground versus running off. Now, why don't you observe what's going on here? At the end of the demonstration. Look how much ran off. You can see how much more run-off overgraze pasture versus the well-rested rotation overgraze pasture. Here you can see how much more water actually soaks in and absorbs onto the rotation overgraze well-rested pasture and how much more water actually runs off the continuous graze pasture. Okay, why do you do that? If I dropped it into an aggregate, if I drop an aggregate right here of that pasture and drop it in here, would it fall apart or not? It wouldn't fall apart. So what's going on here? NRCS? You didn't NRCS at this point? No, Terry. Terry, what's going on? Is that it? What's going on, Dottie? What's going on? Why is this so much more run-off overgraze pasture? What are you guys going on about? Hey, what happened? Structure. Structure? Did it, is the structure impacted? I wouldn't deny that. Hop up when the rain comes like this. Can of 15, 20 miles an hour. How are you slowing the rain drop down? I drove 850 miles a couple of weeks ago to the Missouri to look for a farm. Do you know what I saw? Majority through the country. As I travel, this is what I see. And then we wonder why are we creating our own droughts? How about a rangeland? Does the same thing? Oh, by the way, a hairland. This blows my mind, right, Gabe? You've seen this, insist on it. Even if hairland is that tall, the water runs off. Why does hairland do that? I cannot explain it. I know we're taking too much, taking all carbon, taking phosphorus, we're taking calcium. Hale is playing the most instructive thing you do on the farm. I don't know if it's sucking the energy from the advocates around it. I don't know, but the water continually runs off on hairland. It just blows my mind. Gabe, how many of you guys use this tool? Whoa. Gabe, I hope this doesn't do this to you. Okay? Here's what I'm gonna pass this. I'm gonna skip some of the biology because I think some of you have already, there's a time, I'm having such a headache with this thing. Come on. Okay. Here we go. When I dig in the soil, I wanna see all this present. Go to your range, go to your operation. You need to see every one of these spheres present on your operation. Why don't I get a shovel full? I wanna see earthworms. I wanna see at least four to five earthworms per shovel full. That means you have 850 to a million and a half earthworms per acre. They will move 18 tons of soil in an acre. Yeah, in 27 years, they will completely turn over the whole six inches of your farm and your operation. I wanna see aggregates. That's the house. That's the cottage cheese. I wanna see lots and lots of cottage cheese on your soil. I wanna see in the cottage cheese will be pores. I wanna see roots. I wanna see all that present. And I wanna see residue. In healthy soils, you will see residue on the surface. In conventional systems, you will not see cottage cheese. You will not see the residue. Why? Because it's tilled and destroyed. It's gone. This is why I moved the cows correctly because of them. Not just for the cows. You need to understand the micro herd. We left them out because we managed this elegant universe. Now, what happens when you till that system? This soil is a sub-apodic ecosystem. It works on the water. It will help you. That is a system of aggregates put together to create underground caverns. What does tillage do to that? Herb. Let me run the desk. What the heck do I do to that baby? You mess that up. Oh, but I'm just gonna disturb it a little bit. How about here? These are the guys that, these are protozoa. Protozoa, when they eat a bacteria, the moment you put those living roots, protozoa and nematodes eat bacteria. They, when they do that, they release ammonia. You can get anywhere from 17 to 116 pounds of end a year. Just for those suckers eating the bacteria. Did we ever calculate that in our nutrient budgets? They release ammonia. People worry about where action comes from. It comes from the microorganisms, predation from the atmosphere. Okay, we're gonna skip that. Okay, we have the ability to measure this. We now have a new soil test. You need to write this down. Dr. Ray Ward runs the Haney test. You have to ask this for specifics. We now have the ability, I call it the blood sample of the soil. Dr. Ray Vasky used to say, the soil solution, the worrain when it goes into the soil is the soil solution carries all these carbon compounds. Organic matter is 12,000 parts per million carbon. We now have the ability to measure the food. Soil organic matter is the house, the structure. This is what we're measuring is the food that drives the system. Why do I care about that? You can have 10% organic matter soils and still the soils are not functioning. It's like living in a big house and you need hot dogs every day. Life still sucks. Just because you have a lot of organic matter does not mean that they're healthy. We have some soils in California that are 10% organic matter and they tell them and they tell them and they still have a lot of organic matter but they have very little food. The Haney test has the ability to measure now for years and years with our current university soil test. We only picked up this pool of nitrogen. Now the Haney test picks up this other pool of nitrogen. One of our producers doing the Haney test saved $60,000 on nitrogen cost by one soil sample. Now we're able to pick up the other pools that's called the Haney test. Do it like a regular university soil test. You have to ask for it specifically. Okay? Look at the difference when you do the Haney test. This was done in Mississippi. This is poor no-till, corn and soybean, conventional tillage, no-till cover crops, pasture, forest in a very hot and humid soil. This is the university soil sample, nitrate nitrogen. This is the Haney test. In poor no-till, it said you only had 11 pounds. The Haney said, no, you got 15 pounds, conventional with the difference. Now look what happens after two years of cover crops. Two years of cover crops in no-till. University soil sample says you only have 2.5. Haney says, no, you got 15 pounds of end. It's picking up all the organic tools of end that the organisms can utilize in the plant. Plants can take up amino end. They can take up organic forms of nitrogen. Look at the pasture. 4.74, university. Haney says, no, you got 75 pounds of end. Look at the forest. University soil sample says 11. Now the Haney says you got 70 pounds of end. Does that make a huge difference? Here's the takeaway. We have new science. You know what this sample is based on? Biominium cream. Our old university soil samples are based on these acoustic acids. Like the male can bribe. This is based on root exudate acids. The acids from the plant. Water. What do plants and what does the soil see? This is water and root exudates. Why am I excited about this test? Because it's based on the right premise. Look at the difference here in that soil. That fell apart. 160 parts per million of that late-bile carbon. Race tires is 347. Look at the difference. We now have the test. And from the higher it goes, the better the aggregation. How long does the time do I have to stop? I've got 30 more minutes. Okay. Now, what is the most limiting nutrient? What does everybody say? We've been taught in agronomy. How many agronomists raise your hand? Agronomists raise your hand. Nobody wants to claim it. Agronomists, what do they tell us the most limiting nutrient in the soil since we were indoctrinated? Nitrogen. It is carbon. Nitrogen is used for protein synthesis to process carbon. Microbes want food. Carbon is the food. See the difference? Carbon. You get the carbon cycle, right? The nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle, everything comes right. Let me show you how powerful carbon is. This was taken in the back of the desert of my buddy, Rudy Garcia, a state agronomist. Look at the soil in Albuquerque. You've been to Albuquerque. Look at that, Gerardo. Does that look like some of the soils here? 8-inch precept, okay? That's pretty bad. Look what happens when you put one-inch chips of wood chips on the top of the surface. One inch of wood chips. Look what it did to the soil. Look at the dark layer. It blows away what one inch of wood chips did to that soil. It did this. That turned green, that shrub. Watermelon came out because he had a watermelon seed because he was trying to get his garden. But that one inch of wood chips that took it to a fungal-driven system changed the way that whole soil function. That one inch of wood chips made that huge of a difference in this whole system. He could not get anything to grow back there, but that one inch of wood chips made that much difference. That carbon, that four-winged salt brush, it turned green and blossomed. It was beautiful. Look at the difference where it had no wood chips and where it had wood chips. Carbon is so powerful. That's what, that precious one inch was the difference between life and death in our farm celebrations. Look how powerful animals are. I want to run animals at a very high density. Why do I want that? Jack, why do I want to run my cows like buffalo? Why do I care about running in a group that's so tight? Audience, come on. Impact. I want to run animals just like nature does. Why? Because I want a cow by a foot apart and I want urine to feed microbes to stimulate the nutrient cycle, to get the water cycle to work. If I have a cow by here and I've worked back that, it's not going to work. You have too much bare ground in between to prime the soil. Look what happens when we move that herd like that. We in our range ground and our pastures are understocked, overgrazed. That's it. If the cows are not going that tight, you're not going to get the nutrients of water cycling. You're not going to build aggregate. You're not going to feed microbes. Look at the difference here. And then she'll all the desert when eight inches of preset. Some of you said, why 15? This is a bit more brutal and hot in this place. Look what happens with continuous grazing and 15 years without cows. Do you see any difference? Let's look at another vantage point. See any difference with cows and without cows? Not much, right? Look what happens when you herd them and you focus on the microbes and you understand what you're doing. Look at the mesquite dying and the grass is coming back and you're bringing ecological memory back. Look at the cat that's being choked out just by understanding the cows and the urine and the carbon and what you're doing and grouping the cows tight. Well, how it impacts that system? It's for the eight inch preset. We have ranches to go from here to here. Now the water cycle starts working again. Water cycle's not working because the carbon cycle is screwed up. Let's see about the covers. How many of you have seen that? How many of you know what that is? Come on, audience, please. It's a sprayer with a cover crop seeker. Look at that. A ladder for another ladder. That is awesome. That is for standing. That is a cover crop spreader. Cedar for standing corn. Why would operators, why would producers spend that much money to do that? Because they understand soil function. Look at here, that is elaborate. Look at this one. And that girl, how would you like to drive that one? This is why. Because when they harvest their corn, you're feeding microbes and you have a living cover. We have people that are cutting down the varieties instead of growing 110-day corn. They're growing 95-day corn because every day is precious. And until you treat your cover crop like your crop, you're never gonna change your soils. Until you go to rotational diversity, until you understand how powerful diversity and the living plant. This makes the plant one, the soil and plant one. The plant and soil are one. Look at this cedar here. Yandy seed boxes are harvesting. Your drop heap, cover crop seed. Indiana, it's cold, they say that we don't have time. That's the argument I hear all the time. How about this guy here, Lucas Griswell? This guy's amazing. He farmed soils this deep. Pennsylvania, highly eroded, huge, deep slopes. This year, last year he did 850 acres and he planted no-till corn right into standing cedar rye at that high. Look at his slopes. It was, yes, steep, his firm is. He planted the corn right into the cedar rye. Neighbor says his dad just probably wouldn't say, Lucas, don't do this. You're gonna have army words. You're gonna have all these problems. You're gonna have disease. You're not gonna stand. It's a disaster. Don't do it. He's been no-tilling for years. He got sick and tired of the erosion and he was losing his soils because as you go to no-till-the-soil, it gets softer. Now he's doing green planting. He's capturing solar energy to the last minute. Pennsylvania, where it's cold and wet. Look at his corn and pop right out of that. 190 bushel corn with soil is this thick. Pregnant is right at the bottom. He's using diversity, multi-spec cover crops. We are excited what he's doing. He came to listen to game and learn. These guys came to North Dakota. We're doing cover crops this way. We're rolling it down with an old culty packer and our corn pops right out of that thick mulch that high. Our cotton growers are spreading cover crop seed as they're defoliating. Look how thick, how much carbon we want out there. That's why a race-dier soils are 6.5% organic matter. In a hot, humid area where microbes are eating all the time, he's been doing this for 30 years. All these, these he mixes. Look at the corn pop out of that heavy net. Remember I was showing you, I want a detritus sphere. I want to see adverbates. When you pull that, pull that back. The soils are cooler. They're protected from the rain impact. Look at the weeds being suppressed by a posterior wire, a leopathic effect. Smothering. Hey weed, hey, it's a posterior wire. A rustic thistle is not white, a posterior wire. I know posterior wire is a bad word here. Some cases for a heart. Weak guys, look at the difference in temperature. 92, 77, side by side. Holy, amazing, yesterday. You can use an old culty packer or you can plant it right straight into it. Here's how you plant it to it. Really, really green or really, really brittle. But you don't want them in between when it's rubbery. Consider a ride because then you'll have problems with the drill, the hairpin. Really green, really crunchy. We do it by the way. You plant it, you can either roll it or you can plant it right straight into it. Sure. Now hop. Yeah, and see, here's the thing that we all broke with. It's how do we get helicopters to work in a very brittle and fragile environment? I have come to a personal understanding that you cannot make that worry without having a courageous system and animals in the system. Let's look at your natural system. It was a very, it was a great system. It is very, very fragile. Some of it should have not been far from the beginning. So here's what I'm saying is, if you can remember, it's only through the plant that you build or getting better in the lake room. There's no other way. You'll have to grow carbon. So you have to change your whole system to make it work. I don't think you can just grow carbon because you say, I want to make it work. When you bring animals now, I can raise your animals, make money while they're being grazed. Let me give you an example. If you have 1,000 acres of wheat, why don't you plant every acre into wheat? Why don't you just take 250 acres, grow a multi-species cover crop, let it be grazed, and bring the wheat back into the system? You see what I mean? Because we're gonna have a water issue. Our soils are degraded and they can't handle it. They don't hold any water. Most of the water runs off. They don't have the organic matter. They don't have the structure. They don't have the biology. So it's a systems approach. So I just can't say it's gonna cover crop in itself is not the mental problem. Yes, understanding the system. That's why we failed. Some of the part of Western Kansas is very good. And you have to manage carbon even more carefully. You cannot, here's a good example, for grazing. When we're grazing in the western part of Kansas, how much carbon do we take? We take all of it. We need that much. When I'm far away from North Carolina, I can afford to take more carbon off. It is less brittle. You're part of the country who can't afford to make mistakes. One mistake, we sent you back out five or 10 years. You took too much. That's the difference between those two areas. You've got to make it one. Compaction, how many of you have compaction issues? Compaction, you saw that last night, didn't you? Is that a compaction issue? That's a pretty darn serious compaction issue, isn't it? So how do we fix our compaction issues? You get the big chapter out, don't you? Rip that page, you want to go right into that, right? I don't write the compaction layer. Well, how does that plant survive in that compaction layer? Audience, how does it do that? Is it magic? Is it border shock? The biology's incredibly powerful. These plants are mycorrhizal. These mycorrhizal can release this powerful insulin, dissolve some of the rock. Bacteria can dissolve rock. They can breathe the nutrients. It's the biology that breathes. These plants leak acids. They can bring the nutrients out. It's the biology that do it by itself. I took that in Hawaii, Mr. Beck. Duane, they took that in Hawaii, look at that. You know what that's growing out of? That is a plant growing out of solid rock lava. How did it do that? How did that, how did these trees grow in two inch soil and most of it's rock? The biology and the bacteria and all these organisms modify the system. Here's a website in Egypt Go Orange, it's called Niche Construction. Scientists say the biology modifies the physical. Beavers modify their environment. You modify your environment. You go out and turn the furnace on. Modify it. That four minutes. Look at the architecture. We want to mimic this architecture, ladies and gentlemen. This is the architecture we want to mimic. We want to get away from this system and go to this system. What's lacking right here? Cows. We want to go from here to here. Then you get synergy. We need to cover the gaps here. This is where our systems are annual. We have leaks here, leak, leak. We want to cover it all the time. Look at here, Dave Brent. This is called, he is planting corn into his cover plant. In the early spring, he's capturing solar energy to the last moment. He planted this in the fall. He made sure that cover was there and he plants it right into it. And he's gots, and he's covers look like that. It is very competitive for a lady at day's place. Farmers, the ladies, the widows come say, Dave, can you farm my place? Because it's so beautiful. He has turned his soils from here to here. Biominicry, agroecology principles. Look at his soils now. They used to be yellow. They're this color. The microorganisms modified them. They changed them and the plants. Now he's growing soybean with no herbicide. That soybeans produced 68 bushels into standing rolled cereal rod. No herbicide. Look at his heels' response. This, during the drought, eight inches of rain. Ohio, only you guys get drought. The whole summer, Ohio in 2012 only got eight inches where you lived. Corn produced 140, the neighbors produced 40. Covers, biology, organisms, understanding. Fragile, robust. Covers, we want our covers to look like this. Now I'm bringing ecological memory. This is what we're doing with the covers. When we do that, then these guys come. Then the beneficials come and the beneficials regulate the pests. They take care of it. You just gotta plant it. Pretty darn simple. Let me wrap it up. Let me go to the last slide here because I always do this. Too many slides, but this system here, let's go to right here, the last one. Let's make it good. That's possible. I'm almost got to the end of our game. Ladies and gentlemen, it's our understanding that makes our system either going to be robust or fragile. When I look at the old systems, I always look at your farm ranch from an energy perspective because carbon is what drives the system. Is your operation running on ancient sunlight or is it running on new sunlight? Is it driven by biology or is it driven by chemistry? Now folks, I don't want you guys walking away thinking that I'm opposed to fertilizers and herbicides and those things. I am not opposed to those tools, but understand the more you are addicted to these tools, the more fragile your operations at. I want you to be robust and here's how you make it robust. You need to be ecologically and financially diverse. You need to stack operations. You ain't gonna talk to you about it. The more you run cheap, you run cows, you sell chickens, you sell eggs, you sell all the, you're doing what nature does. Nature does not put all her eggs in one basket. She is diverse. She is diverse. It's the principles. It is the principles, we'll climb them all. Here's the book that I was talking to you about. My last. We cannot face the ecology. You cannot have ecological integrity without human integrity. I'm sorry, you're not gonna fix it. It's the way we look at the system makes it fragile. It's the way we do business. I bought this book recently. I read it about 10 years ago, didn't get it. I bought it again because I realized how much I'm missing the work. If you want to change your operation, you have to change you. You have to change the way you look at things. And then your operation will change. You cannot separate the two. They're intertwined and intermingled. You cannot separate them. I wanna thank you guys for allowing me to spend some time here. These are the principles. I cannot go through all these some months. You read that book, it is well worth it. I don't care if you are Mormon. I don't care if you're Christian. I don't care if you're Buddhist. Again, matter. These are self-evident principles that very effective people apply. You apply those principles, then you can fulfill the other seven principles. So you stick with it. Thank you, folks, for your time. Yes, sir. There's six or seven labs. There's Wood's End Laboratory in Maine. Type of hand test. I use the Wood's End Laboratory in Maine. They do a really nice sheet. This training is really like last night when we talked about it. But just to talk about the test and understand it, it's like a two, three, four hour training. Just to understand, teach it right and give it the right context for what you're doing. Great lesson. There's four, five, six other labs to do it. Do you remember another one, Paul? But there's five more. Gabe, do you remember any of the other labs that do the hand test? Wood labs, no. Wood's End. There's four, five, six other labs to do it. It is growing. But the results, we have 6,000, 7,000 samples. NRCS is supporting this test. This is Dr. Rick Heaney from ARS. This is done through a 15 period review research. Some of the science has been around a long time for that. Finally, we have a test now that can really help us a lot. It's just the beginning of this test. It's just the beginning. I'm sure it's gonna go through more development. More questions. H-A-N-E-Y, Dr. Rick Heaney. You type in it and he'll come out. Dr. Rick Heaney, he'll come out. He's in Texas. It is wonderful. We have been very, very pleased. Now I feel much more comfortable. I'm not saying don't use the university test. You compare it. But a lot of our producers are using it. I had two producers in North Carolina reduce half the fertilizer cost. But they've been no-till. One's been no-till for three years. This year, his average yield in North Carolina was 220 bushel corn. And his neighbors, they average the county's 110. With half the fertilizer. We use the H-A-N-E test. Yes, sir. Yes. H-A-N-E is H-A-N-E destructive to the soul. Yes. Why? You take all the carbon. You take phosphorus. You take calcium. You're away from the system. Now, how do we fix it? Bring the animals, graze it. Give it some the nerve. Bring some diversity back into the system. Give it back to the system. It's tough. You get some of our haters to understand that. They remove everything. If you can bring grazing, don't take so much carbon. Like some of our falcon guys, I said, hey, why don't you mix some clovers, mix some grasses in there. Bring some diversity. Different leaches and zoonics. Bring the cows in there. Let them graze. If you don't have cows, let the neighbors graze your hayfield. Don't take the last cow in there. Give back. That's tough. Yes, sir? It's helpful. Oh, absolutely. The reason hayfields only last three to five years, they go from a system called soil toxosis. I can never, I used to raise hay. Do you not figure why I can never get five or seven years out of hay? Pure hay. According to some of the Russians, they said that there was a bacteria, a phage, a virus that attacked the nodulators. And they would kill the nodulators and they would poison themselves out. Nature does not want to see the same room by itself after year after year. So it wasn't the lack of fertility. It was the fact that we went through soil toxosis. Peaches will be the same. Nature does not want to see the same rooms year after year at once diversity. So you're gonna prove that the phalpha stand by bringing in more planets. The nerves, urine, granite, compounds, those kind. I think, what do you think, Gabe? I think, what do you, yeah. You gotta incorporate, just deal it, counter that, get back to the system. Hey, my definition of hay is when you go like for, you're going horse hay or there's a phalpha hay where you're removing a majority of the biomass. Yeah, industry, or even just even regular hay. You're still removing carbon all the time. They, here's what the organisms want. They want, they want to be graced. Grass wants to be graced. They want urine, it wants to be dirt, it wants that saliva, it wants the biology. The machine doesn't like that. See, it demands that, it wants that. Did you agree that, Gabe? Right, yes sir. We talked about this last night, it's not the hay in itself is bad, it's the removing it. Yeah, yes. I thank you for making that clear. It's the removal, not giving anything back. Now if you're managing your animals and you're going to remove it and do some hay, but you're gonna feed the bales back when you took it. You see, you're moving the animals back, you're giving them back to the system. It's how you do business. It's how you do business. Always cognizant of your microbes, of the whole ecology and what you do. More questions, turn it over. Okay, great, good.