 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. What I'm going to attempt to do in this short hour and a half is explain to you just a brief overview of our operation and where we started and how we arrived at the point we are today and some things we're doing to advance our operation a little further. First thing I want to say is I'm in no way here to tell you how you should or shouldn't run your operation. Only you can determine that. I'm simply here to share our story and our journey in focusing on a healthy resource. A little bit about the history of our operation. We're located right actually in city jurisdiction for the city of Bismarck. Our ranch is about 5,000 acres of that. There's 2,000 acres of true perennial native range that's never been tilled. There's another thousand acres that is what we call tamed grass pastures. In other words it was tilled at one time and then seeded back to perennial forages. And then we have another 2,000 acres that is in cropland. This ranch was founded by my in-laws back in 1956 and they farmed it from 1956 until 1991 when my wife and I purchased a part of it from them. Now when they farmed it they were the cropland was under heavy tillage. They tilled half summer fallow half crop every year and they used a lot of synthetics you know fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides, etc. They primarily grew all small grains springweed, oats, and barley. And I was fortunate when I bought that operation in 1991 we had NRCS come out and do some baseline soils work. And what we found is that the cropland acres we could only infiltrate a half of an inch of rainfall per hour. Now we're in about a 15 inch rain moisture environment. Of that about 10 inches is from rain and the other 5 inches is from the approximately 70 inches of snow we get area. Also on the cropland our soil tests that year showed we were averaging 1.7 to 1.9 percent organic matter. Now soil scientists will tell you that historically in that area central North Dakota organic matter levels were in the 78 percent range. So in other words from previous production practices we had burned up so to speak three-quarters of the carbon in that soil and we had degraded the soils to that organic matter levels. Now as far as the grazing system it was three pastures was all season long grazing. They could run about 65 cow-calf pairs, 35 yearlings. Pairs were then put out on crop aftermath and then they were put in perrals and fed forages for six to seven months. Cabin took place in late February, March, a little bit in April. That was what it was historically like. And I've actually been on that place since 1983. We ran the cattle air for a number of years before we bought it. And every year I started to see more and more things like this. You know because of the heavy tillage we were seeing a lot more erosion and I tended to see what I came to know now as a lot more symptoms. You know we were having to put more and more inputs in to give the same amount of production. And so what we went on was a journey over a period of years as to how do we improve soil health and how do we do that? For me the answer I found was in that 2,000 acres of native range. You look at native range land and see what it has and then compare it to the production standards we were given. Well nature's way of doing things and Ray used this slide. There's no mechanical disturbance. Obviously you had disturbance from a major event such as a flood or something that there is no mechanical disturbance. You always have armor on the soil surface in true native range in a healthy ecosystem that is. A true healthy ecosystem also cycles water and it cycles nutrients. And it has thousands and thousands of years of research and development to it. You know I kind of find it amusing that today we look at the current production model and we call it the conventional model. I would challenge anyone that this is a conventional model because it's proved itself over eons of time. So I came to the conclusion years ago that the greatest problem in solving a problem is the human mind. I had to change the way I looked at my ranch ecosystem if I was really going to improve things. So Ray touched on this. Five keys to regenerating soil health. Ray up to to seven. He's always trying to update one. But I'll show you now. I'm going to go through and show you how our ranch focuses on these five keys these five principles and then how we apply them. Okay if you look at the native range plan obviously there's no mechanical disturbance. So why is that? Well it's in order to store carbon, build organic matter, and cycle nutrients. You know there was nobody going and applying synthetic inputs into this native range yet it continually produces year after year. Why don't we see that in our cropping system then? Ray showed these pictures about what happens with tillage and how we burn off so to speak or degrade the carbon but we also destroy the porosity of the soil and Ray demonstrated this with the with the slate desk where we don't have a disturbed soil that's been till we have these soil aggregates. Once the soil has been tilled we destroy those aggregates and that affects it affects infiltration rates, it affects erosion, it affects a home for the biology because the biology lives in those poor spaces between those soil aggregates. Here's a photo that illustrates this really well. Ray and I spoke four years ago down in Kansas and this young producer Michael Thompson afterwards he really latched on to what we were saying and he went home and told his father, dad I'd like to try this and to his father's credit his father told him okay Michael here's what we're going to do. You're going to take this quarter and you're going to farm part of it your way with crop diversity no-tailed cover crops and I'm going to continue to farm the way I've been with tillage with monocultures. This fall Michael sent Ray and I this photo look at that difference in three years time by reducing tillage adding diversity and cover crops that's pretty amazing which one's going to have the most carbon which one's going to store the most water which one's going to hold together through those rainfall events that's pretty dramatic now they switched their entire farm over he sold his father on the idea so on our operation in 1993 I had a good friend in the northern part of the North Dakota who was a no-till and he said Gabe you need to go no-till in order to save moisture and save time but if you do that he said sell all your tillage equipment because then you'll never be tempted to go back and I actually did that we sold the tillage equipment and bought his no-till drill and we've been a hundred percent zero-till on our cropland ever since when I say zero-till I mean zero-till we want the least amount of mechanical disturbance possible because we don't want to destroy those soil aggregates here is what I think is one of the most under appreciated things we have going for us in production agriculture if we use it and that's mycorrhizal fungi and Ray talked about this the importance of mycorrhizal fungi is it secretes that glue called the mailer that starts the formation of soil particles so what do you actually see here in this photo this is off of a millipede and this is the formation of soil particles due to the male so we need mycorrhizal fungi if we want to build healthy soil that's a photo Paul took on our operation last spring that's just that thin trench that the disc open when we were seen but I wanted to show this picture to show Ray mentioned this morning you want your soil to look like black cottage cheese I wish when I started our operation in the early 90s I would have archived some of my soil because it would have been the dull brown soil lifeless compacted with no aggregation that you saw in that earlier photo this is what we've been able to build it to today black cottage cheese with a lot of soil aggregates those poor spaces are essential not only for biology but also for water and filtration I've been on that place since 1983 this road here separates my home place from the neighbors and I can talk about him he's not here but every year since 1983 he's gone out in the fall and dug that's low spot there every year not and I haven't failed for 31 years June 15 2009 they were forecasted in a major rainfall event for us which usually means about a quarter of an inch but started raining at 6 30 in the evening by 12 midnight at 13.2 inches a room and I knew that because I was I took this photo and I was running out dumping out the rain gauge three weeks later that's what his low spot look like now the ironic thing is in the 31 years to my knowledge he's only harvested a crop on that low spot twice because every time here we get a rainstorm and this is what happens he destroyed by dull that tillage area he destroys those soil aggregates there's no way for that water to infiltrate Ray showed it over he showed that water cannot infiltrate when you till your soil so why are we out there till now Jay fear who's our district conservationist with NRCS came out the next day we had had another four tents during the night so we ended up with 13.6 inches in 22 hours this field here is it directly across the road from that field of the neighbors now I'm a little embarrassed we lost some residue there's a few bare spots but that doesn't look too bad for 13.6 inches of rain on Jay down in the soil whoops I took about he dug down in the soil it's actually this photo right there that's what the soil look like after 13.6 inches of rainfall notice the poor spaces were able to infiltrate it I'm not going to kid you we didn't infiltrate all 13.6 inches some ran over the surface but it looks pretty good for that amount of rain here's what we've done on our operation I mentioned we could only infiltrate a half of an inch per hour the last time NRCS tested our soil was in 2011 we can infiltrate over eight inches per hour I've never seen a rain eight inches per hour it's not how much rainfall you get it's how much can you infiltrate into your soil profile and then store there via organic matter for those plants to be able to use later in the season or when they need it that's why to me you know for years ten years I tilled alongside the father-in-law work and summer fall and it just didn't make sense to me what we were really trying to do he thought he was saving moisture no it wasn't he was costing himself moisture and that's been proven time and time again and I'll talk more about that coming up okay the other thing Mike Marisa Fungi I do this fungal hyphae network will go up over a much larger area it forms these symbiotic relationships with the roots so if you don't have lycorrhizal fungi in your soil you're only going to be able to transfer water and nutrients from a much smaller area of the soil profile Dr. Christine Jones is one of the world's foremost authorities on lycorrhizal fungi was on our ranch in September and she made the comment to me that in Australia where she's from she found one lycorrhizal fungi that covered over 2,500 acres think about that you know how many nutrients are being transferred over 2,500 acres so instead as producers today we worry about you know accurate fertilizer placement and all this technology hell all you gotta do is get lycorrhizal fungi and transfer those nutrients for you I don't need to spend all my money on that type of technology when nature will do it for me and she'll do it for free if I provide the proper environment for it the other thing what else the lycorrhizal fungi do lycorrhizal fungi occupies the roots of the host plant when those roots are occupied by the lycorrhizal fungi they're no longer to be able to be invaded by pathogens nematodes etc so you have much less disease pressure when you have a healthy lycorrhizal fungi now this is all has all evolved from eons of time with nature why aren't we taking advantage of it in production agriculture today so lycorrhizal fungi improves aggregate stability it builds soil carbon improves water use efficiency and improves the efficiency of nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and other micronutrients we need to take advantage of that what can we do to increase lycorrhizal fungi reduce tillage reduce synthetic fertilizer reduce synthetic chemicals and we have to have a living root in the ground as long as possible and I'll talk more about that because if we have to have the host species for those lycorrhizal fungi second principle armor on the soil surface native a true healthy native ecosystem as armor on the surface at all times remember I told you back when we started farming with my in-laws there was an armor on the soil surface then we ended up with degradation such as this you know why do our streams look brown all the time in the spring from run up because we don't have that armor on the soil surface to protect bare soil is detrimental to soil health so one of the things we focused hard on now in our operation is to have that armor or that residue on the soil surface notice a plant corn there no trash with us that's way too much tillage why do we want to leave that soil bare prone to wind erosion water erosion and a place for weeks to germinate we don't want that the crop will come up just fine to that that heavy residue the other thing it'll do it'll buffer that that heat we get later in the year will keep our soil temperatures much cooler and Ray talked about that these particular photos here were taken at our place on a day that was just under 100 degrees air temperature in the cover crop we were 87 degrees bare soil was a hundred and seven degrees well you might think that 20 degrees what difference does it make but look out affects the plant at 70 degrees a hundred percent of that moisture so moisture is used for growth when we get up to a hundred degrees very little is used for growth that plant stuff start to shut down that moisture is being evaporated and when we get much higher than that and there's many times that been on operations where we read soil temps 130 to 150 degrees then we're killing off biology in the soil that's directly impacting our net profit our bottom line we have to keep armor on the soil surface keep those soil temps cool this photo is taking that same day look at right under the surface we got earthworms working because we're able to keep that soil temperature down where it doesn't inhibit this it doesn't affect that soil biology you brush aside the cover crop and what do you see that solid earthworm cast rain mentioned about earthworms I tell the story when I started on that operation we could never go fishing because there was no earthworms to be found last spring we did earthworm counts 12 inches by 12 inches two inches deep we're averaging over 60 that's a lot of earthworms that is the most nutrient dense plant food you'll find what about those poor spaces that those earthworms those tunnels ID those roots are going to follow those earthworms pores right now it's going to improve infiltration also these are free I don't have to pay them with the exception of providing the home for why don't we do that in production agriculture today third thing diversity tell you a little photo about this particular pastor I bought this tract of native ground in 2002 and I tell people I bought it for two reasons one it was true native prayer Paul teaches rangeland management at the local college there he brought his students out to this past year one day and in two hours they counted over a hundred and forty different species of grasses forks and like that's a healthy native rangeland ecosystem why don't we have that production egg today the other reason I bought that land was because with that many rocks that never be tempted to break it up now I thought I had some rocks but when I was traveling in Australia came across this field the amazing thing was Ken Miller was with me we stopped and looked at it we were taking pictures and here the farmer pulled up this is seated there's old seated but don't feel sorry for looking the upper right he picked the worst ones there's a rock box thing about it we got to busy with the farmer you know we just played dumb tourists we didn't tell him we were farmers ourselves but he sent me a photo that he built me a photo of that oats crop when he was condited in the fall I would like to run your equipment across that I tell people I can build a lot of topsoil on our operation but it's gonna take me a few years to cover that many rocks you know but it can be done so the third principle of soil health is diversity you look across the United States today what do you see you see corn you see beans you see wheat monoculture monoculture monoculture why are we farming that way where in nature do you find monoculture pretty much only where man put it right otherwise there's the person we're trying to fight nature instead of working with her ratio this photo look at that 17 years of monoculture untilage that's what you're doing to your soil that's why we have to change our mind to get away from this type of production model just doesn't make sense in 2006 I had the good fortune of going to a no-till-on-the-planes conference and this gentleman was there that's dr. adamir caligari from Brazil the world's foremost authority on cover crops works for the United Nations he's worked in over 65 countries all over the world and up until this time I've been growing cover crops in one or two or three maybe species mixed together but dr. caligari said two things that day that really stuck in my mind he said you give me two inches of rain hole year 200 inches anywhere in between and I'll grow you a cover well then I knew no matter what environment I'm in around the world we can grow the other thing he said is this cover crops are meant to be seeded in multi species combinations and I never forget what he said that because I was really mad at myself because I'm going to look at native range what's happening in that native rangeland ecosystem you have all these different species growing together so dr. caligari talked about how when he works with producers he's recommending seven eight nine ten way different species in a mix so we decided that we're going to try that on some of our soil conservation district land in burley county so the winter of 2005 2006 there wasn't a lot of snowfall it was really growing and we have some plot lands located a mile south of my branch and we decided what we were going to do we were going to go in there and we were going to see monocultures an acre of this species acre of acre of radishes acre of turnips acre of sorghum sedan then at the end we were going to mix all those species together and test his theory as to what had happened now we seeded these in May and it was really dry as I said and from the time we seeded them in May until these photos were taken July 31st we only had an inch of rainfall okay that's what the turnip monoculture looked like on July 31st right next to it was the well-seed radish no different dried up and you keep going down the line until you got to the polyculture how do you explain it for years we've been told in production agriculture you gotta grow these monocultures you can't allow any weeds you can't grow plants together really nature is telling us otherwise why are we trying to impose our will on nature now in our CS clip those plots that they and look we tripled above-ground biomass where the polycultures now the difference here at the end half-way fullway simply got too many plants per square foot but look at that I mean this more than anything else taught me the lesson that we need diversity into our system Dr. Chris Nichols who's a soil microbiologist explained it this way not only do the fungi and she's talking about that mycorrhizal fungi that I talked about provide for the needs of one plant but the fungal high-feed pipeline connect to multiple plants thus sublime the energy and nutritional needs of multiple species so the fungal high-feed pipeline connects to all these different roots the deeper rooted plants help feed the shallow-rooted vice versa and they bring up different nutrients that's how nature evolved over time that's how our native ecosystems evolved over time we need to take advantage of that in our production systems today it really came to to really teach us that monocultures are a detriment to soil health if we want to really focus on on healthy soils we got to get away from the monocultures because it's diversity that's going to drive soil health so we all know there's four different crop types cool and warm season broadleaves and grasses I mentioned that my father-in-law planted spring-weed old Spartan all cool season grasses there's a lot more crop types than this and then there's warm season there's four crop types but a lot more species than this why are we focused on growing so few crop types so what we've evolved to now on our operation is that we try each year to plant some of all four crop types now don't pay any attention to what species that plant they may or may not work in your operation just notice that I'm planting some of each of the four crop types I'm trying to get that diversity on to my field so we're feeding that biology a diverse mix and now since that time we've evolved even further where we no longer try to plant monocultures for instance in the upper left that's oats with clover grown in the upper right that's a mixture of cool season broadleaves the lower left that's correct that's corn with hairy vetch and clover grown in it and then the lower right that's sunflower and there's actually about 20 different species of covers growing in with that suncloth so we're trying to cover this have the multi species get away from the monocultures okay fourth principle living around the ground as long as possible and Ray talked about that you look at a native prairie ecosystem we have cool season warm season grasses forks legumes very very diverse and from the time that snow leaves in the spring up until well past when the snow starts in the fall we're have a living rut in the ground as long as possible so that micro risel fungi can form these relationships ratio this picture approximately two-thirds your organic matter increase will come from roots so the more roots we can put in the ground the more organic matter or in other words carbon that we're going to build and store in our system this one just I just can't figure this out you know above every acre there's approximately 34,000 tons of atmospheric nitrogen why is a producer do we want to go right the check for synthetic nitrogen urea and hybrids etc it's free it's in that it's in the air all we got to do is plant legumes in our rotation and we'll have we're not taking advantage of it so in our system this is a picture of a field of oats where we went in and we under seeded three types of annual clover so the clover is fixing nitrogen through my rise of fungi it's transferring some of that in to the roots of the corn plant I mean the old plant then we straight come by that oats off and we have this growth of clover if we get some rain it's a little dependent on moisture but then we can either just let that clover go we can graze it but it's that living root extending the growing season here's a picture close up of the corn with the hairy vetch in it that's worked really well in our operation to do that and I tell you what you're going to graze cattle on those corn stalks afterwards that batch is tremendous protein you'll balance the protein needs of any class of livestock with that in that in that ration now we've tried to do some broadcasting where we go in and out about v6 and we broadcast in this case it was subterranean clover and turnips we usually don't broadcast we really are too dependent on the rain fall to get that started so I prefer to drill it but the years it has worked it works pretty well and there's a picture of that in the fall that here we're ready to combine that corn and we have that beautiful understory of covers in it so the other way we can have a living around as long as possible is with these cover crops and in my mind a cover crop is a diverse mix of plants that enhance the life and the function of the soil that's what we're really trying to do is address our resource concerns now on our operation we grow a myriad of different cover crops this is just some of them this past year we actually grew over 70 different species of covers on those 2000 acres of crop on our 2000 acres of crop and we try hard to have a cover crop growing on every acre every year either before a cash crop along with the cash crop or in the case of fall by annuals after the cash you're kidding yourself if you think you're gonna really advance soil health by putting a cover crop in following a wheat harvest for example we just don't have a long enough growing season in our environment we got to change that and Ray explained that when he was answering the questions so the first thing you need to do when you're planting a cover crop you have to decide what's your resource concern what am I trying to do you know am I trying to improve nutrient cycling am I trying to increase organic matter am I trying to build soil aggregates am I trying to enhance pollinators what am I trying to do I see way too often where producers go seed a cover crop without answering this question first that cover crop they means they seed may or may not address their resource concern they actually may compound their resource concern problems you have to ask yourself this question first the other thing a cover crop can do is it can fill in the production gap you know where in my crop rotation where do I have an opportunity of time to grow a cover or in the case of livestock production where do I need to fill in a forage gap for my livestock and I'll talk more about that now why diverse cover crop mixes if soil health is truly your goal crop diversity can not be overstated or ignored plants were created to grow in very diverse ecosystems we know this it's proven resiliency and rate talked about resiliency fragile anti-fragile it comes from diversity you're going to build soil health quicker with diversity you need to feed that soil biology a balanced diet those microorganisms they eat different things they only carbon but it's going to depend on each species as far as what type of root eggs you dig it secretes biology need diversity and then you got to have balance because even good things when used in their own proportion can be harmful and I've seen this I've seen way too many suit circumstances where people plant cover crops high in brassicas or legumes and then they wonder why they have no residue left on the surface well they planted way too low carbon crops they cycle the nutrients through faster the residues disappears and they end up with erosion problems you have to figure out what's your resource concern and then keep it in balance if you want to design a mix and I'm not promoting any cover crop seed dealer over another but this is a really good place to go learn green cover seeds dot com keeps develop what's called smart mix calculator you go on there their website you click on smart mix calculator and a form like this comes up and it has all these these different categories here and it's got drop boxes so you can click in there hey I want to put for instance five pounds of service and then it automatically calculate how many seeds per pound etc. etc. cost it's free to use it's really good way to get you thinking about diverse mix so say we decide well our resource concern is that we we don't have enough micro iso fungi because we've tilled this field with too long what do I see to help improve the micro iso fungi in that particular field well this list some of the grasses and broadleaves that you can use to address that resource concern and there's many others I just listed a few what about if you have poor infiltration compaction for instance if I ever buy my neighbor's land there I'm sure I'll see things like this this is really common because of the tillage that's used you have a compaction layer down the only way we're going to break that up is through living roots as Ray talked about so we'll go in there here's another common site that's a dichon radish and notice it's about 14 inches above the soil surface I'll guarantee if you go down under the soil here you're going to find a compaction layer down is these radishes start going down to hit a compaction layer to push the above ground finally get enough energy to cope their way through so you can alleviate compaction layers with species such as this you need that diversity below ground just like we have it above ground there's different root types fibrous roots tap roots shallow roots deep roots we need to think of that we need to think of addressing all the areas of our soil profile now some of these roots can get really large that's a 16 inch tire there if you're really concerned about compaction and infiltration use radishes instead of turns and then you cannot plant them in the spring or they'll just tend to shoot a seed head bolt and go to seed plant them from late June on and then you tend to get the larger type tubers now my friend who raised shown you a picture of David Brandt he brags about his big radishes so I said that's nothing David I know big turnips so it's a contest between us but what happens these are not only do they poke a hole in the ground these radishes but then they release their nitrogen accumulators and they release that nitrogen very early in the spring here's a photo early in the spring that's all you see that is those infiltration you know Ray mentioned it what about subsoiling and you know these people want to go in with that with that steel and break those compaction layers the trouble is they're just gonna move that compaction layer a little deeper because it'll just be whatever depth they were subsoiling at that's where the compaction layer is going to move to with roots we can alleviate that it'll take us a little longer but we can permanently alleviate it by using roots such as this and there's a lot of species you know sorghum Sudan ryegrass radish turnip sweet clover sunflower is really good any of those with deep tap roots will help you alleviate those compaction and infiltration problems now what if your symptom is like this low organic matter soils like the soil on the right there is what I started out with soil like that back in the early 90s we can go in there with species that produce a lot of root mass because that root mass will add organic matter to the soil as I said so then we go in with these type of species that produce that large amount of root mass now the question was brought up after a race presentation about what about using moisture aren't cover crops going to use all our moisture well here's a study that was done on Marlon and Patrick Richter's farm they're about farm about 15 miles south of me in Burley County in what they did they went in following a winter tritical crop and they harvested off the winter tritical and then they planted a very diverse cover crop and they decided what they're going to do they're going to test this they had a they had a field that was actually split by a tree windbreak and they said okay but harvested the winter tritical we're going to plant cover crops on one side of the shelf well no covers on the other this is the mix that they use notice in here that there's no cool season grasses because the winter tritical was a cool season grass they're trying to get diversity so they're using the other crop types that then what we actually did we weighed the calves before we turned them on to that cover crop next early October we weighed them going on weighed them coming off average 3.1 pounds a day gain on the calves we did not weigh the calf this is pretty common to get three plus pounds a gain gave grazing these warm season mix because those swarm season mixes high in C4 plants in other words like the sorghum sedan in other words they have an extra carbon molecule usually higher in energy you'll get better gains so weight them coming off average 3.1 pounds a day so you take off the cost of the seeding in the cover crop seed brictors netted themselves an extra $66 an acre profit at that time they sold the calves immediately after and the price of the calves is in there but an extra $66 an acre net but what's the value of that increased recovery time for their native range because they got the cattle off of native range and then what's the value of room soil now we wanted to know here is the next spring Marlon I just planted corn this is the you see a number right the trees this is on the one side of the field that's on the other side where there was the cover crop look at that rescue because they were careful not to remove all the residue with crazy they left over half but look at that rescue protecting that soil look where they didn't have the rest now in our CS came out prior to planting in the spring they took soil samples to figure out how much water did that cover crop use you know how much was used because that was the big concern is how much moisture was going to be used in effect the following crop there's the answer there was 4107 inch difference in race at this our soils can only hold so much because we only have so much organic matter in our soils why not use it to produce the cover crop graze it with the livestock turn it to cash that way build organic matters in our soils then down the road will be able to hold more so this proved directors that it wasn't cost any moisture it was wasted opportunity is what it was I can't figure out for a life of me why any producer out there with livestock would not grow cover crops it just doesn't make sense not to because there's no way you're going to improve soil health and why not take advantage of that and convert that building of soil health into dollars there's the weed pressure then to the next spring which one side needed an extra herbicide so you're saving money that way also and we can use species that are known we suppressants if we want and here are listed some of them so you can use these cover crops to your advantage to address your resource concerns and they'll end up with more dollars in your pocket so on our operation one of the easiest places for us to start using covers is with fall seeded biennial this particular photo is of winter trinicalia and hairy vetch on our operation that's a slam dunk no brainer I've never had the hairy vetch winter kill I've only had to winter trinicalia winter kill twice in the past 21 years so we just use combinations like this all the time and it leaves us an awful lot of options and that's one of the beauties of this type of a system is you will have more options Paul and I really like to cab out on winter trinicalia and it really works well for us and we cab from May 15 through the end of June we turn the bulls out for 35 days about a 45 day cabbing window we move the cattle we don't set up a back fence move the front fence every two to three days we're not moving them real often every day and we don't confine them real tight by their cab we found that this leads to extremely healthy cabs we it's just we just don't treat cabs anymore just doesn't it's a fresh clean cabin ground now before I show you the next slide I'll tell you a little story Paul just being out of college when these photos were taken he had a lot of his friends back here five and six years ago we had a couple winters that were really pretty harsh they were you know 120 plus inches of snow and his friends were emailing and calling them that they were fighting scours and modern slot cabinet browsed during the winter so Paul says I feel sorry for you but you can feel sorry for me when I can and so he sent him this photo you know cabin in sync with nature is an absolute dream that's the way it was intended to take place when you do it that way it's really a joy that's one of the ways we can use these fall-seated by any now another way we can do that we can obviously raise it as it's growing with stock or cattle or whatever but in this particular situation this particular field our resource concern was that we didn't have enough armor on the soil surface so we purposely let this winter trinite calibash get to a higher carbon state in other words a more mature state and then we grazed high stock density used high stock density grazing on in this particular photo we were grazing just under 700,000 pounds of live weight per acre and we went in there and did multiple moves per day we use bad latches and we were moving these about five to six times a day but we were doing it for a specific reason and that reason was to put large amounts of carbon down on the soil surface the cattle were only eaten a third but they were trampling the rest which is what we wanted we can easily make back all of our costs plus some profit by just grazing that top third and then we were addressing our resource concern so here's what it looked like then when they were done you got dung and urine as racehead spread out over the whole thing you got that litter trampled onto the soil surface and because we had waited until it was nearly mature it killed it so in place of the crop roller that Ray showed you that's the way we terminated it we didn't have to go in there with the herbicide mask then we're able to see directly into that a couple days later and we'll see the very diverse cover crop mix that's what the the mix looked like about 20 different species I always get asked how do you set the drill just set it so the largest seed can flow through it's really not an issue works while we seed it a half to three quarters of an inch deep smaller the largest seed breaks away for the smaller seed here's the type of diverse mix we were seeding because we're seeding that the middle of summer we're going to use primarily warm seasons your sorghum sedan millet sunflower cow peas etc those are primarily warm seasons we do throw in a few cooler season species just in case we get a cool summer like this past one there's a picture of the larger seeds breaking away the way for the smaller seeds notice the soil aggregates in that picture that's what we want to see soil aggregates like that then we have a lot of different options for this cover here's what it looks like with any luck with a couple inches of rain now the winter triticali and harry vetch will use most of the available soil moisture but when you have a healthy efficient soil we can get that type of production unless the two inches of rainfall pretty consistently because we built that resiliency into our soils and with the armor we have on there we're not going to evaporate that moisture off so it's going to be used by the plant now there's many things we can do with the warm season cover though in this particular case we were grass finishing some steer zone now when we grass finish livestock on there we don't run near as high as stock density because we want them to be able to select for maximum energy intake that'll equate to higher gains or we can run cow calf pairs on there as i said earlier pretty easy to get three plus pounds a day gain grazing these type of mixes and if we want to flush or herd of cows before breeding that works extremely well also they'll put on a lot of weight so we'll let them eat a roughly a third of the above-ground biomass trample the rest and then let them on to a new break okay so that's another option you see what i'm trying to do i'm trying to build all these different options and scenarios so we have resiliency in our system we don't have to worry about drought etc we can then if we don't graze it that way we can just let it go let it run its life cycle and here's how we convert most of our cover crops on our operation into dollars it's by running our cow calf pairs on those covers through winter North Dakota State University did some good work with the nutrient content of these forages in winter late november early december now i tell people if you're going to run cattle on there your covers use turnips use a forage type turnip because it's not really the root the tuber there after it's the forage but radishes in this case in late november still 14% crude protein 70% tdn there's a turnip it'll be roughly the same cattle light tea turnips better than radishes harry batch as i mentioned harry batch even in winter will still be near 18% protein 70% tdn here harry batch while it's growing will be 25 to 30% crude protein it'll be higher in protein than our this is a slam dunk no brainer for us why not valent why do i want to go write a check and we have a motto on our operation we want to sign the back of the check not the front works pretty good why do i want to write a check when i can plant a cover and let that be in our protein supplement rather than purchasing a product millet we usually don't use a lot of millet in our winter or mixes that we're going to graze in the winter because millet tends to fall off rather dramatically in protein and tdn as compared to like brown midrib sorghum sedan which will hold its nutrient content really well into winter allow your livestock to do what they do best it absolutely amazes me on the way down here yesterday we saw a number of people and of course they were all in North Dakota not in South Dakota but that we're feeding our way and i'm like man we got we're open why would you be feeding don't provide your cattle with a bed and breakfast they have four legs make them use and we do that's not a herd of muskots that's 47 degrees below windchill that's 350 cow cap bears grazing cubs i actually felt a little sorry for paul as i sat in the pickup and he walked out and took that photo they'll do just fine if you have the right type of livestock and acclimate into these conditions now when we graze our covers during the winter we're going to do just like we do when we graze our pastures during the summer we want to make sure and leave that armor that litter on the soil surface one of the biggest complaints i see from the grain farmers is all the livestock they leave the ground to bear and compaction etc that's a function of time don't let your livestock eat at all you got to leave that armor on the surface so ray talked earlier about soil tests and and about the quote standard soil test and the hay test i'm going to show you through a series of slides what we found okay so we start with this here's a field that had a cover crop on it we took a standard soil test showed and i know it's too small to read top two feet of the soil profile we had 10 units of nitrogen how much corn can you grow on 10 pounds of ant if i went to the agronomist and asked him and i told him you know county average and burley county north coat is just under 100 they're going to say well you better add close to 100 units of ant on here if you want a hundred bush of corn well we haven't used any synthetic fertilizer since 2008 here's what we did we went in there no uh planted our corn in there and i'm typically plant corn from may 15th to may 20th somewhere in there when i say i'm a no-tiller i'm a no-tiller on the left is planted on the right is not we don't want to disturb that residue anymore than we have to now look we're starting with a lot of residue then here's june 16 there's july 1st where's all my residue going dr ray ward who owns ward labs ray talked about it ward labs cerny nebraska him and i are friends but for years we had a little bit of an argument dr ward said that my system is going to eventually crash because i'm going to use all my nutrients i didn't believe that because how did nature work nature cycles nutrients through if you have the diversity to allow her to do so so dr ward came up to a sample of leaf tissue analysis of this corn crop here at tassel this is the same field that showed i only had 10 units of nitrogen i didn't add any here's his leaf tissue analysis at tassel notice nitrogen's the top line i'm actually in the high category every nutrient he tested for was sufficient to hide where did it come now i want to say this right away i'm in no way like ray i'm in no way telling you stop using your fertilizers you'll have a wreck if you do that if you're using synthetics now because what happens as you grow these covers you're tying up a lot of your nutrients in the above ground biomass of those covers the roots and in the soil biology soil biology is just like us made up of nutrients so you have to think of it as your little fertilizer storage bag okay if you quit all of a sudden cold turkey at a synthetics you're going to have a wreck in your cash crop next to it because you're getting all these nutrients tied up in that biomass and in biology you have to wean yourself slowly so here's what that particular field looked like at harvest i'm embarrassed to this folder because it shows bare soil on my operation i never want people to see that since this was taken that's why i've gone to seeding the covers in with the cash crops now because i don't want it to show that soil to be bare it's prone to erosion it's going to infiltrate water at a much slower rate soil temperatures are going to be higher i'm not feeding biology i'm going against every principle of nature in that form so here's what we yielded in 2012 on our whole place we average 142 bushels of corn 2012 here's my actual income and expenses from 2012 now since this time we have now dropped out of federal crop insurance i don't want to be on welfare so i no longer take any federal subsidies for that so we've dropped out of that but what i want to show you is my cost to produce a bushel of corn corn locally this fall was down to $1.73 a bushel i could still make money out of that there's not a lot of people who can't but we could still do to be honest with you i didn't plant any corn here in 2014 i just saw that cycle coming and there was a lot of other crops that i could plant that i knew i'd make more profit on that corn but if we focus on the resource and on soil health we can significantly lower our cost of production the soil is a lot that's what it's about i mentioned that i had no earthworms when i started this is what we got now a super earthworm so ray said it this way soil without biology is geology and that's what it is that's why that soil test did not work because it only showed the chemical and physical properties when it was showing me ten units of nitrogen it did not take into account the amount of nitrogen and other nutrients i was going to get from the cycling caused by soil biology so dr rick hanning here's dr rick hanning's address phone number and i don't mind giving it out what do i care if he gets a lot of calls that's a good thing because then we're we're going to move this forward he developed the system as ray said that uses natural means water and rodentinates to figure out water extractable organic carbon which is the food it measures that which is the food that that biology eats so i really look at this test to be the link between the current production model and how we move to a more biological model which is what it's about i've been using that test now what ray five years right on our operation i tell you he can pretty accurately predict the kind of yields you're going to get now the question about livestock and the importance of livestock these two different color bar graphs here are two fields of mine that are side by side they both have been no till for many years they both have had very diverse cash crops very diverse cover crops over the same period of time the difference is the line word field has had two years where we grow the full season covers and use high stock density grazing now the first bar over here is total nitrogen pounds 86 to 90 no significant difference in organic phosphorus 65 pounds to 239 next bar is potassium also in organic 429 to 595 what this proves to many of us is that livestock are an important missing link as to making these nutrients more available so what we're doing is we're able there's something about the very diverse mixes livestock grazing them cause those mixes to release root exonates also propagate the biology that break down those organic forms convert into plant usable forms livestock are an important key in building a healthy soil we have 400 acres of prop land on our operation that we cannot raise there's housing development surrounded the soil health there will never be as good as it is where we're able to graze livestock i still go crubbers on those acres very diverse cash crop mixes we're still not using any synthetics but we're not near to the soil health point as where we are where we're able to graze livestock bananas she must set it best in nature's economy the currency is not money it is life you know it's come to the production agriculture now is to the point where the soil is just a medium to hold the plant up from that's all it is we're trying to spoon feed it every nutrient we can and we're right to check every time we do it if we grow living things and turn our soils into more biological system we no longer need those type of inputs so here's what we've been able to do on our operation in 1993 1.7 to 1.9 percent organic matter today we're from five three to six one the five three is on those soils where we're not able to graze livestock but we're moving you know we've over tripled our organic matter in our soils what does that equate to nutrients this is pretty simple math you just figure out the size of soil the NP sulfur carbon multiplied times whatever the rate is at your local elevator in other words for every one percent organic matter in the soil we have about $750 worth of nutrients if we increase our organic matter to five percent what does that mean it's my nutrient bank account there back when i still had a banker i was using this on my as prepaid fertilizer expense why not now he laughed of course and didn't take it into account but i was trying to drive the point home with him what's the difference other producers are right to check prepaying their fertilizer my fertilizer is in my soil same thing right soil carbon is a key driver for the nutritional status of plants and therefore the mineral density in animals and people soil carbon is the key driver for farm profit and race sadness i sincerely believe this also water holding capacity which i'll discuss we have to start thinking in terms of carbon race edit when he asked the question what's what nutrient you most look at in your soil many people think nitrogen it's carbon carbon drives all of the profitability on our farm and ranch now what about water holding capacity what role does it play when i started out less than two percent organic matter i have still long soils so in other words the top four feet of the soil profile i can only hold about eight inches of water now we're over five percent organic matter i can hold well over 20 inches of moisture in my soil we're in a 15 inch rainfall environment every drop that comes as long as i have the soil cover the aggregates the four spaces infiltrated i'm going to be able to keep it and store it for when i need it we build our own droughts race seven we do when we have resiliency built into our systems no longer affects us now one percent organic matter in the top six inches of soil can hold 27 000 gallons of water so do the math when i started out i could hold about 256 million gallons of water in my operation today we've upped that to 810 million gallons of water what difference how much more biomass can i grow often that's how come i can grow the cover crops i can on very little moisture it's because our soils are efficient and they store water fifth principle animal impact Ray talked about this i own this newspaper the prairie farmer 1871 that's on the front cover that newspaper that's how our prairie soils were formed large herds of grazing animals being pushed across by the predators and then you also had local species such as rabbits grasshoppers and such it was a living ecosystem is what it was where are the animals in production agriculture today you know driving down here i did see a few cows out grazing some crocland but they're really not integrated into the system we have to start doing that now i mentioned when we took over that operation we could run about a hundred head of beef animals total today we run 350 cow gap pairs that's our constant we try to keep our cow herd the same every year we run between four and 800 stockers and grass finished animals depending on forage conditions we've got a small flock of sheep and i'm not going to have time to get into them but we do run sheep this year we added pastured pork started that up we run a significant number of broilers in these broiler mobiles ball makes we pull them across the paddocks work extremely well most profitable enterprise on the operation right there we also run a lot of landhands and these landhands are also the fly control mechanism for the grass finished animals we pull those portable egg mobiles around here where we run the grass finished animals those layers spread out to the nerve pads and eat the fly larvae works extremely well we haven't used any porons or insecticides in our operation on the livestock in eight years no need to do it anymore because we're working with nature i don't have time in the presentation to get into all that but the dung beetles the predator insects for for every insect species that's a pest there's 1700 that are beneficial okay why do we as producers focus on killing that pest when we're killing the 1700 that kill that pest it makes absolutely no sense no sense at all and it just costs us dollars out of our farm now what does this mean when we go to this type of a production model that's what it means you don't think there's a difference between a pastured egg and a factory raised egg tell it to our customers who are paying four dollars a dozen from a parade we used to think on our operation of this or this as being our customers now we've changed our mindset we're trying to direct market everything we can off of our operation that's Paul's meat concession trailer there or marketing things we're trying to equate healthy soils into nutrient dance foods we want to be price makers instead of price takers this is one of the big problems in production agriculture today we're price takers instead of price makers we should be set in our own price so here's what this equates to in our operation Paul put this chart together soil water sunlight carbon that's what we start with here's all our enterprises up top we have cash crops cover crops perennials we have starting over on the right we've got a small orchard i didn't even talk about that we market wildlife on our operation we have a cow calf operation grass finished beef we have a sheep operation we have guard dogs and border collies you might as well sell pups out of them we have bees which we sell retail honey we have poultry both broilers and layers we market the screenings of our grain crop through the broilers add value we also sell screenings to other people who need livestock feed we have pork sell retail pork we have grain we sell natural grain we also run grain through the pork we've got a vegetable business here's just some of the ways we convert to those things into dollars i tell people if you think there's no opportunities for young people today that's bull and here's just some of the other operations we're thinking of taking on and i've only listed some of them biggest problem is we're just three people on our operation you're only limited by your imagination that's all you're limited there is so much money to be made in production agriculture today it's not funny and it does not include going to the mailbox and getting a check it includes doing it on your own oops with all these types of enterprise and all we're doing on these is we're taking advantage of what Ray said biomimicry we're mimicking nature because we need the guard dogs to take care of the sheep well if you're going to do that you might as well sell reading stock you might as well sell pops you know we've got the grain well we got screenings from the grain you might as well market that through through poultry and then market it to other people also first question we get asked when people come to buy product from us is where are you from they want to know where i'm from so if they have a problem they can come directly to me and that's fine i'm good with that second question they ask every time is are you GMOs or non-gmo that's the second question we're 100% non-gmo we use it to our advantage that's what i'm not going to get in an argument whether GMOs are good or bad but if that's what my customers are telling me that i'm going to sell third question is do you use antibiotics well we don't have it for years now i'm not going to say that we don't treat an animal but if we do if we have to then that animal is sold through conventional means it's not sold as meat and the fourth question is do you use any artificial hormones no we don't so we're able to capitalize on take advantage of and the reason we don't no longer need those inputs is because we have a healthy system that relies on biology instead of on inputs that's what it's about in our operation is building a healthy soil if we start with a healthy soil we're going to have clean water clean air healthy plants healthy animals healthy people and make no mistake about it we have a health crisis in this country america spends more on health care than any other country in the world yet we're the 42nd healthiest country in the world now a lot of that's due to our sedentary lifestyle but make no mistake about it part of it's due to our food production model also so here when we started in 1993 we had a low organic matter very shallow soil we started to diversify the cash drops that was the first step in the ladder noticed an increase in organic matter we added cover crops another step up building healthy soil then we really went to the multi-species cover another step up in soil health built the top soil even deeper then in 2010 when we really started to integrate the livestock and the different species of livestock we noticed a large jump in the organic matter in our soil and now here this past year we actually have a plot of land that tested 11.1 percent organic and our goal is to take that field scale now we're going to see and i'll tell you we did all this without any off-farm inputs with the exception of seed and other hay we brought on to the operation because we prefer to buy most of our hay rather than put it up ourselves just for the reasons that rain talked about other than we're doing this just with what we have on our operation then we're able to build very healthy top soils 1997 i had the opportunity to attend a holistic management conference and Don Campbell was one of the instructors and he made this statement to me and i'll never forget it if you want to make small changes change how you do things if you want to make major changes change the way you seed things and i'll never forget that statement because i had to change the way i was looking at my soils and my farm ecosystem in order that i could move on and take it to the next level there's our contact information you can feel free to contact me or paul at any time we gladly take questions and emails so Ray's got a question the question is to i think our farms and ranches are too big now realize that's going to depend i don't want to name acres because it's going to depend where you're on and what you're trying to do but on our operation we were over six thousand acres of owned and rented land we shrunk to five thousand we're going to let some more acreage go as leases come up because we're stacking so many enterprises right now paul and i sat down last winter and i'll be honest there was a few drinks involved but we were trying to figure out how few acres do we need to support a family in our environment north to go there's zero doubt in our minds we can do it on 160 acres no doubt at all we can easily do it on it you know i've got a neighbor of farms 40 000 crop land acres what's the point i will guarantee you i'm producing more calories of nutrients per acre than he is by far because he only has one enterprise he's grown one cash crop off those acres i've got all these different enterprises on my operation and i'd like to believe that's one of the things we're working on is document nutrient density of products so i think farms are too big but realize it's according to where you are in your operations good question right other question yes is there a key population i target for cover crops per acre realize of course it's going to make a little bit of difference according to the species does the species stool etc good rule of thumb is where you're at what's the average seeding rate for wheat as far as plants per acre in my area it's about a million to million two hundred thousand wheat seeds per acre that's a good starting point for cover crops mixes you know use that as your guideline because it's going to vary where you're at you know obviously further west drier environment you're going to go to the little lower populations i know i'm yes another question do i see the bench when i plant the corn i'll be very honest i used to back in the years where i used glyphosate we haven't used glyphosate in quite a while now but i used to see that trinicale matched together in the fall spring of the year i'd use a little uh hit it likely with glyphosate it'd kill the trinicale the bench and just get sick and into regrowth then i quit using glyphosate you can still do that same thing with a grass herbicide like shadow or what i've been doing is i go in the day before to actually seed the the vetch and clovers then the next day plant the corn but now i bought a white planter like ratio the pictures of david brant with that white planter with 15 inch intervals where now i hope to be able to plant my corn on 30s my cover crops on 30s in between because i just don't want those two passes that's burning fossil fuels and i don't like sitting in a tractor so that's what i'm going to do is try going to that mom harry batch is a biannual you know that's how it evolved over time to be seeded in the fall but if you seed it in the spring it'll tend to act like an annual on its life cycle that year but you could go with annual clovers too crimson bercini maryl leaves something like that subterranean they all work also with that it's lunch time i'll be around so we can ask questions very much after oh we got time okay if we got time i want to do that pretty fast other questions roger what oh yes stand up here roger and i'll hand you this you can talk about that for a minute and then we'll answer some more questions david bray have just made a strong case for the integration of livestock and carbon systems i'm roger gates i'm range extension specialist for sdsu you can help us out by helping us learn where folks in this part of the world are in terms of cropping systems livestock systems if you would help us by answering a two-page survey from back all you gotta do is check your answers the surveys are in that far table there's a stack of surveys it's anonymous if you'd like to we're also interested in identifying people that are intrigued about doing some cooperative farm research so if you're interested in that there's also a place to leave your contact information so if you'd help us out by spending three minutes to do that we'd greatly appreciate it thanks okay yes please please do that i think it's absolutely fantastic that we're getting research agencies interested in this type of a production model now i want to make one other thing clear before i go 2000 acres of crop okay up till two years ago we were seeding about 90 percent of those acres so in other words about 1800 two cash crops every year and then either a cover crop before along with our after and then the other 200 acres was full season covered now what we've gone to here is we've started seeding back a major component of our crop line to perennial grasses and forks perennial because i really think if we're going to heal the ecosystem we have to get perennials in so i can't tell you at this time how long we're going to leave those in we'll see but what we want to start doing is going to the production model where it's in perennials for a number of years and then moved into an annual because i really think that'll heal soils much much quicker than an annual type system and i often get asked this you know how do i heal like a corn bean rotation with covers you don't you're not going to get there you're going to make small my new changes better than nothing but you've got to diversify the rotation that's one of the big stumbling boxes people just are not willing to diversify their crop rotation and they have a million different excuses and who wasn't Henry Ford who said whether you think you can or you think you can you're right you know i have not i feel a hundred percent confident there's not an operation on the world where i can't get this system to work because we're seeing it work in every country all over the world where there's production agriculture it will work it's just a matter of you making up your mind that you'll get it to work won't you say right any other questions before we break for lunch yes times with the triticali bench where it's real muddy and then i wouldn't want to put livestock on there is that your question we just don't put livestock on there if it's really but to be honest though paul how many times does that happen can you remember now i can't remember that we need the cattle got to be somewhere during that time the livestock whatever species you're using so what if they muck something up a little bit we just slow down the next year when we see it you know the beauty of systems like this is taking advantage of nature one of the things we found that we showed the pictures a cabin on winter tree to cali bench if you cab on there then move them off before it starts to shoot a seed head move them off it'll go to seed and we'll reseed itself for the next year and we get two years worth easy out of one seed or a few gray stockers on there you can move them on and off there up to six eight times let it grow bring it back on let it grow bring it back on take them off you know you can take advantage of this in a dry year why not do that you know take advantage of nature and use these things to your advantage instead of fighting against other question great did you have something to add because you're itching inching your way up front you're making me nervous i thought you were stalkers any other questions okay with that i guess it's lunch time