 Is Dwayne in here, Dwayne Beckett in here? Oh good, I can talk about him. First thing Dwayne says, and he really bothers me, I can understand why he does this, he says how can you identify a soil house like a dying to identify a beautiful woman? Well, I have an answer for him. When your wife's in the audience, you better be describing your wife. That's what the answer is. Okay, soil health. What is soil health, guys? The continued capacity for the soil, here it goes, the key word, function. To function as a vital living ecosystem. And I tell my producers, if you do not understand that the soil is a vital living ecosystem, I can help you. Cannot help you reduce your inputs because if you still think it's a growing medium, it can help you. This is what the soil does, we want it to function. Can you guys name some of the functions, Bill, what do you want your soil to function? What do you want out of your soil? Percability, infiltration, what's another one, Jeremy, what do we want your soil to do? You guys, it's not asking hard questions, I'm not putting you on the spot. What do you want your soil to do to your crop? So what do you want it to do? My nutrients, folks, it's a medium for growth, it's a habitat for the organisms, we wanted to cycle nutrients and we wanted to clean the water. Here's the kicker, I was a water quality specialist and did not know that. You cannot clean the water until you cannot have healthy water, until you have a healthy soil. You can't do it. Now, here are the principles and I know some of you have seen them but you need to internalize these and in fact I've changed this one. The first three are human word, it's towards you as a human. This is the first thing, how many conservation planners do we have in here, raise your hand. Nobody wants to raise your hand, aha, NRCS, I'm going to pick on you. What is the first step of the planning process? Identify the resource concern, well how can you identify it if you don't know how it works? Here's the first one, understand your social and ecological context, context, context, context. When I walk on an operator's place, I am coming into his world, when I come into a farmer and ranchers, I am coming into his context, into his social life. Folks, until we understand soil health is a social problem, it is a social problem, it's the way we look at the ecosystem and also because we don't understand it's ecological, it's a social problem, it's an ecological problem. I had a rancher in Idaho told me when he first went to Tildon, he could not go to the grocery store because people would say you're an abuser of the land. We impact each other socially, watch how everybody, I also have a saying, if you want to go broke, watch your neighbor and farm like him. If you want to make money, farm ecologically and be an observer of nature. The second one here, you cannot build ecological integrity until you build human integrity. How many of you guys went to NoTill initially, went from conventional to NoTill? Remember that? How did you feel going there? How did the neighbors treat you? They were happy about that, weren't they? You got to have integrity, to be patient, to withstand everybody around you and to be a student. That's why I wrote the book, The Seven Habits of Effective People. They do all those effective habits. If you do not understand your social ecological context, plus have the integrity to be astuned and to withstand all the criticism, you can't build soil health. And patience, and you got to have a holistic plan. Now you can apply the rest of this stuff, reduce chemical stresses, physical stresses. By the way, young man, I caught you asleep. What is a physical stress on the soil? What's a physical stress on the soil or disturbance? Name one. What's the next one? Name a chemical stress. Thank you. Fungicides, insecticides are herbicides. You got to be careful with them. And chemical fertilizer, it's a salt. Did I say not to use them? You didn't say that. Use them with wisdom. So we got to reduce the stresses, cover the soil, grow a living root, synergize diversity, diversity, diversity, diversity of animals and plants. It's pretty darn simple. Bill, I can send you to Afghanistan and you can start the soil to function. I can send you anywhere you follow those basic principles, you can fix the soil. Another thing about context. Is the context here different than farming in North Carolina, Stan? It is, isn't it? But the principles are the same. We can break it up into basic four, habitat, food, understanding and have a plan. It's that simple. Let's go down the journey. Here's the big problem right off the top of the bat. My wife tells me I'm 99% of the problem, Bill. All of us look in the mirror, we're the problem. It's the way we look at the natural ecosystem. Here's another thing that's really stopped soil health from growing. It is difficult to educate a man if his check depends upon it. It is very difficult. Now let's go down the journey. I'm going to go quickly because I'm going to show you this was taken in 2014 in Colorado. The reason I'm showing you some of these things is right now it looks nice and green, right? But how many of you really believe that the rain comes consistently? Raise your hand. You understand, don't you? It doesn't, right, Dan? Look at here. Here's where we're at. By the way, that is an area in Arkansas that gets 50 inches of rain. And we're having wind erosion and they use irrigation. I said, if they knew that you get 50 inches of rain and plus you use irrigation, do you know what farmers would think of you? You're crazy. What's wrong with you? Their soils are destroyed. This is where I take all over the country and I fly and I see those lakes and rivers. I took that with my iPhone. I love seeing this in front of EPA and NRCS headquarters. I said our lakes and rivers are filled with conservation plans and nutrient management plans, but not crystal clear with understanding. You probably wonder why I still have a job, right? I don't know either. Now I want you to look at this lake around my house. We're flying in and why does it look like chocolate, Kate? Why does it look like chocolate? You don't know. Why does it look like chocolate? We have an erosion? Stream bank erosion and that? Now look at that beautiful diaper. I love diapers. That's great buffer. I love it. But we need that space and I love what Dwayne's doing in this. We're giving nature space. Now hold that, Chuck, for me. Now if I get an insect, Jonathan, and I put it right here and I smash it, what does it die of, John? Lack of space. Lack of space. Nature needs space. We need those buffers, okay? So we need those space. Now let's go down here. This is a video just recently taken of Iowa. We are losing 5 to 50 tons per the acre in Iowa. We're supposed to be the beacons of hope for erosion. We have created NRCS for 75 years and this is how Iowa looks, one of our best soils in the world. There are only four soils in the world like Iowa. Argentina, a little spot in China, the Ukraine, where did I forget one? China, Argentina, Ukraine, and the United States. And Dennis says South Dakota, mine. Look at that. Now, let's get here. This is Las Cruces, New Mexico. Jonathan, this is where I went to school at. I want you to look, I was born in 1961, this is the Hornada Research Station. I want you to notice that right here. I did not know that Southern New Mexico was a short steep prairie. Look what I knew. This is what I knew, invasive mesquite and bare ground. This is our enemy right here. This is the beginning of desertification. Even in your own farm, even if you have a center pivot, every, every, your biggest enemy is bare soil. Look what happens when you take animals out of the system. Now, I want you to think of ecosystems like this. This is a huge basin. There's a cool model by Dr. Walker. It's called, it's called these models, the base, the ball model basin, where this ecosystem is bigger because it requires more energy to run the prairie. Everything that's involved with the prairie, all the function, all the connection, all the energy, all the organisms represents that basin. That little yellow ball represents ecosystem services like nutrient cycling, water infiltration. This little basin is a degraded system like this one. Now watch what happens when it crosses a threshold goes into this energy form. Now it went from this energy level and went down to this energy level. So how do we bring it back? How do we bring it back from here to here? What's the energy source we use, Mike? We've been saying it all day, carbon. We bring the animals back. We shift the system back. And sometimes you don't know, you know what folks, I don't know if we're going to have the energy to shift millions and billions of acres that have been so degraded and bring it back to this system. That's why we have to use our energy and our ancient oil and everything very carefully now to restore our planet. It takes energy to bring it back from here to here. Soils do the same thing. They shift. They go from here, from this regime to this regime. And it takes energy and carbon and everything back to bring it back here to a functioning system. This is our problem right here. This is what I learned in college, informational knowledge, but it wasn't personal knowledge. There's a huge difference. Personal knowledge is when you say, I understand, it gets into the soul. You understand. Here's why when I know a farmer gets it. I have a young farmer named Lucas Griswold. They had, he's in Pennsylvania, and they were doing an inter-planting. In the drill, the planter was making a lot of surface disturbance. He got off the truck and he stopped the guy, he says, let's adjust it. You're making too much disturbance. You understand. He's beginning to understand. I don't mess with my soil. Do you notice the only one that dug and drained soil? It was drained. Not many people are allowed in the inner sanctum. Now here is the weakness that I think in our agriculture. Our agriculture is driven by this. This is our Achilles heel. It is driven by this very complex system. What did Dwayne say? It took how many gallons of diesel? 30? For every one ton of fertilizer? In one gallon of diesel is 134,000 British thermal units. That's equivalent of you working 500 man-hours non-stop. We are using our energy and it's complex. And let me tell you, when you're dependent on this kind of system, you are in trouble. You are not sustainable. Okay, now here's what we're going to talk about. Now we're going to understand connectedness. The definition of ecology is very simple. The study of the house, economics, the money of the house. We need to understand it's about relationship. Now we sat there today and I said to you, I never understood that these microbes were connected to the water cycle. What does that mean by that Chuck? What the heck does that mean by that the microbes are connected to the water cycle? Did the biology impact infiltration? Yes or no? It did, didn't it? So if you cannot build aggregates, you cannot have infiltration and the water cycle is not complete until the water goes in the soil. Okay, now, this is for you Dr. Beck, this slide. Well, yeah, for you to wake up, look. A lot of people have accused the Soil Health movement not to be scientific. Really. Odom, Piper, Jensen, all these brilliant scientists said, hey, the principles, we can learn principles from nature but they're rarely ever applied in natural, in farming systems. We've known since the 80s, don't tell me that Soil Health is not scientific. Okay, let me skip here. Now, if I explain Soil Health, one word would be biomimicry, ecomimicry. Here's the one I was telling you about. What has Dr. Beck been saying? Emulate the prairie. Here you emulate the prairie. We got 3.8 billion years of research and development and 10 to 30 million species. The Calculber, a scientist used Velcro. He said his dog had a burr and he made Velcro out of that design. Can you say the word millionaire? Here's another biomimicry. Engineers are using termite mounds to bring, build their air conditioning systems and they're reducing that by 90 percent. Biomimicry, robotics. We're using elephant trunks to build robots. Biomimicry has been around for a long time, ladies and gentlemen. Biomimicry is in the scriptures. Ask the beast and they will teach you. Biomimicry has been around for a long time. You know why I didn't get biomimicry the first time, Don? My college got in the way. Here's a new one. People have won wars because of biomimicry. The Koreans were able to save themselves from a Japanese invasion because they made ships shaped like turtles and they put spikes on them. Biomimicry. So what can we do for agriculture? This is the biomimicry we're talking about. The prairie and the forest. What is common in the prairie and the forest? Dan, look at those pictures and tell me what they have in common. Come on, audience. What's in common in all that? It's covered 24-7. Yes, sir. What else? Diversity. Beautiful. What else? It's covered. It's diverse. It doesn't have a living root 24-7. It's the co-op fertilizing it at night. Who's fertilizing it? Internal cycles capture the sun. Do they have animals, Derek? All of them have animals in both systems. What about our agro-ecosystems? Are they like that? No, they're not, are they? Okay, let's go to the next one. Here's what we're talking about. What we want to do is bring these ecosystem processes, the best book that ever helped me understand this was Alan Savry's book on holistic management. It taught me about the water cycle, bio-community dynamics, the nutrient cycle. All of these processes are going all the time and they're connected. So when we overgraze, we impact this. These processes are mostly like this in the land. We are not capturing solar energy. We are not understanding how these processes work. Okay? Now, in college, they taught us this. They said, it's physical, chemical, and biology. I say it's this. When I say the word soil, it is alive and biology dominates. Biology builds the physical and it helps regulate the chemistry through organic matter. They build it. Biology dominates. It is the priority, especially if you are farming and ranching. This is the shovel we used yesterday, today. I already showed you its most very powerful tool. Okay? Oops. Oops. Oh, this is not good. This is not good at all. Don't do that to me. And then you'll say, well, great, Ray, we don't have to listen to you anymore. Oh. 19 minutes into my program and dead. Hold on a second, folks. We may have a very short presentation. Yeah. Force quit. Here we go. Sorry. Okay. I'm going to have to do the ugly kill it. Okay. Any questions so far, folks, about what we're talking about? And what you've seen today? None? Dwayne, I answered all your questions in perfection. Yeah. Yes. Did you guys hear the question of Dennis? Can you imagine if we would grow corn under pivots and only use half our water? You're using less than half, aren't you, Dwayne? You're using about half. Say it again, okay? And so what was the, in Iowa, I know the typical thing when we were designing irrigation systems, they told us we need 30 acre inches to grow corn, 30, 32. And that's what we would design for evaporation and everything. We would shoot for 32 acre inches. And so think about how much corn we're saving. If we would do that, how about California? Can you imagine if California would be doing what we're teaching? It would be amazing. We wouldn't be having some of these issues. Okay. Let me get this here. Let me go down here and we're going to go quickly. Let's pass this. Okay. Now, I want you guys to see this. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Saving me. You saved me. Okay. Remember we talked about the aggregates and all this. Look at the cottage cheese. This is what we were talking about. Now I want you, how many of you have sandy soils? Raise your hand. Do you have sandy soils? Watch this. You see this? Creating the sand? Look at the coating. How did that coat it? We through biology, biology and plants create those organo mineral complexes, those cement agents, that's an aggregate. When you do that, now you have cation exchange capacity. You can regulate temperature. You can regulate pH, make your potential, all this, but now because you now have an aggregate. Now you coat that sand particle and you don't lose nutrients. The soil is a system of this. It's a system of underground aggregates fused together to create this subterrain caverns. The soil is this. So you saw that cottage cheese, so imagine it's a house, it's a caverns fused together with cottage cheese to make this beautiful, elegant universe. Even in our hot, dry climates, even in deserts, if we were to shrink every one of you, it would still be 90% humidity because the hydroscopic water connected to those particles, you still have humidity there, even in those dry climates. Now, earthworms, here's the one Duane was talking about. This was taking a special camera at night in Quebec where no-till is not supposed to work. Remember Duane was talking about those earthworms bringing in? Look at that. This is the reason why Duane does not go to his fields by himself at night. Where's Duane? They took him, man. The earthworms took him. Look at that. And that beautiful, I never knew earthworms could do this. Can you imagine that? Look at this. Fantastic. Now, how about this earthworm? Hey, Stan, you go check the corn. Nora, you go check the corn. Okay. Look how they modified the environment. So what about this? Why are we pushing biology? It's these guys are the factory workers, folks. These guys do everything. Now, here's a principle I want you to walk away with, too. It's very, very important. That one. Plant and soil are one. They are not separate units. One night I was reading a research paper and I came out of the house screaming and I said, why if I get it? She looked at me. I mean, I can't believe I married you. What did you get? Plant and soil are one. They're not separate units. Soon as you get your corn up, corn, soybean, whatever, cover that soil. That soil must be covered 24-7. We want this. We learn, this is why we mimic, we do ten-way mixes to mimic this architecture. The architecture on the top, architecture on the bottom. We want to mimic this prairie system in the cropping system. We also do this where there's the woodlands. We want that architecture on the bottom. This is the place where it changed me totally. This happened in 2006 in North Dakota. This is where I learned that nature was more collaborative than she is competitive. The North Dakota guys, it was Jay and Gabe and all these guys up there, they planted this plot. And that plot only got 1.8 inches. It was an old CRP land. They took it out and they planted lupin, oil seed, pasha, purple, cow, and a cocktail mix. And look what happened. Look at the biomass on this one. This was a multi-species mix. They took every one of those and threw in the last roll. Let's look at it. Look what happens if you put a brass oil seed radish by itself with only 1.8 inches. Boom. Now look what happens when you put the turnip by itself. Now I ask you audience, what happens when you throw them all together in a mix? This happens. Look at the plots behind there. This plot made me change the way I looked at nature. Why is it like this? If you mix it, but if you leave it by themselves individually, they look like that. What do you think? Dr. Anderson, what's going on? Why do you think that's going on? Look. Collaboration, huh? Synergy. Look at this new paper. Write that down to some of you. The Stress Grading Hypothesis by Dr. Brown. He wrote a meta-analysis and he did research on all kinds of type of communities and he said under stress, plant communities do not compete. They collaborate. That's what's beautiful. This is why we design these mixes because we want different compounds in the soil. We want to bring biology to make Jonathan happy, bring all our insects. We're bringing ecological memory back. Look at these mixes that we're designing all over the country. Duane, you would be very happy about this. Indiana now has 10% of their cropping land covered, have cover crops. 10% of Indiana now has their land covered with cover crops. We just found out just recently because of the soil health movement and pushing it. 10% of Indiana and you probably said, well, that's only 10%. It is phenomenal to get 10% covered. Look at right stand. Look at these grasses stand. This is blue stem. We also get this. This also becomes a food source and conduit for energy. Jonathan, I did something for you, my friend. I'm good now. I bring the bug. When Jonathan did this, I cut this right out of your article, Jonathan. I was absolutely blown away. When we bring diversity in, when we bring it in, this is what Jonathan's been telling us, all the beneficial insects, all the critters, all the predators, he wrote down that 162,000 weeds per square foot. But these organisms, 10% of all the weeds can be eaten per day. Is that right, Jonathan? By millipedes, small crickets, isopods, field crickets, carobid beetles. And you know what I like about that? You didn't have to put insecticide or you do not have to pay anybody in the tractor to go spray. They're eating that weed seed for you. Derek, did I pronounce your name right? How do you pronounce it? Look at our beloved Canadian brother. Look how he's doing polycropping right here. Come on with those two. You've got here, you've got two chickpea and flax. And do you know why he did it? Tell them. Half an inch of moisture and no fungicide. Very cool. Thank you for letting me use your picture. Now let's go to the heart of the belly, Elk City. This is Kent Walken's place. He grew 12,000 pounds of biomass in Elk City where they only get 16 to 18 inches. He heard my talk in Elk City. He is a chemical fertilizer dealer. Kent said to me, Ray, I want to get away from chemical fertilizer. I said, well, why don't you do a mix? And I designed that mix for him and look what he did with that mix. Remember, this is Elk City, an hour between Amarillo and Oklahoma City, 16, 17, 18-inch precept. The neighbors would walk to him and say, what are you going to do with all that hay? He says, I'm going to roll it and plant my sesame right into it. His sesame came out beautiful. The neighbor said, you're an idiot. Look at all that hay. We could have just knocked all that carbon away. Look at that. That is awesome. He is now, we had that class and we had 68 people show up to the class and then we're going to have Gabe and me do another class next year. Who knows? We meant now, I want you to look at my roller in North Carolina. That's my daughter's diesel jet up. My lawnmower went out, Dwayne. And I told my daughter, I said, daughter, can I borrow your car? Look at the cereal rye that tall. I am rolling it with no herbicide. I used no herbicide to terminate that cover. That was vetch and a three-way mix, five, six-way mix. How much diesel? Very little. It gets 51 miles to a gallon. My daughter was not happy. Now, look at me. I'm going, yeah, baby. This is so much fun because I hear farmers because I don't have the equipment. No. It doesn't matter about the equipment. This is important. Don't get me wrong. But you can figure it out. Look at that. How I roll. And I do have grazing animals, Rhodesian ridgebacks. Okay. Now, this is my new drill. This is my daughter. This is my wife, down pressure. She's my down pressure control. I said, I called Dave Brann. I said, Dave, I'm not going deep enough. I think it's too dry. He goes, go get a 100-pound sack. I said, I don't have one. So I said, hey, wife, you want to take a ride? That's my down pressure. Now, mycorrhizae, folks, why are we doing this? We want to be in those mycorrhizae networks. When you bring carbons, start bringing plants, you're going to bring this mycorrhizae network. Now, to show you how powerful the biology is, does anybody have compaction issues on their farm? Raise your hand. Okay, Dennis. What do you do for compaction? Beautiful, but most farmers do what? Diesel, baby, diesel, horsepower, right, Dan? That's a compaction issue. How's that plant surviving that, audience, determination? What's going on? Tell me, that's a pretty darn compacted. How's it surviving? What is it doing? Did you know that conifers are heavily mycorrhizal? Did you know when CO2 in water comes in contact, you create carbonic acids? Did you know there's bacteria that break down rock? The acids they leak can get the mineral and the mycorrhizae out of the rock. Write this down. Anybody taking notes? There's a cool video by Ohio State on the biology of compaction where they purposely compacted with grain carts and they compared tillage with cover crops. Who do you think won, Bill? Who do you think won? The cover crops did. It yielded higher when they put cover crops. They purposely compacted in heavy clay soils. It's called, the video is called the biology of compaction, Ohio State. Great, replicated plots. I just went to Hawaii about five months ago to do tea soil health. What a horrible job. That plant was growing in stuff like this. How did it do that? What I'm telling you is we weigh under us to make the power of the biology. That's the point. They leak. Here's a great book for some of you that are geeky. It's called, The Risosphere by Robert Pinton. These roots leak sugars, organic acids, amino acids, water, carbon dioxide, bicarbonate ions, protons, electrons, ethylene. All these chemicals are leaking into the rhizosphere and the plants also cover our soil and protect it. Now, this is going to be really cool. What did Dwayne tell you today? Carbon is the limiting factor of the soil. Now look how powerful the plants can become. This is a NASA model showing the CO2 of the planet. The dark red is carbon monoxide, carbon CO2. Look at the CO2, and I want you to notice the dates. This is February. Look at the CO2. This is South America, the United States. This is Africa. Look in February. Look at all the CO2 that's being forming. What are we doing in early April in agriculture in the United States? What are we doing? Planting. And how do we plant? We all do a no-till, right? Tillage, getting the land prepared. Look at this. April. Look at the dates. Now look at, now look what happens when we hit June. Look at the colors, the real dark red colors, the CO2, and then it starts. Look what's happened in May. Look at June. Oh, it's starting to disappear. Why is that? The plants are taking it out of the atmosphere. Is it possible if we covered the planet that we could solve some of our climatic issues? I think so. In fact, the soil is the biggest, second-largest carbon sink in the world. Look at it now. And guess what happens when we get into April? I mean, October or November, it starts getting red again. We take the plants out. See how cool this? Now. See, what time is it? Because I can see these guys, I'm holding up for ice cream, okay? Let's talk about how powerful animals are. We talked about plants, right? Biomimicry. We want to mimic the buffalo. Should we give them a five-minute break? You guys need a five-minute break? Number one, okay, now everything I do now is by biomimicry. I judge everything by biomimicry. There is an institution called the Biomimicry Institution. If you need to write this down, I tell you what, there's a TED talk by Jeanine Benyes. You type the word biomimicry and listen to her for 20 minutes. She's phenomenal. I would love to go to school there. It's very expensive. It's called the Biomimicry Institute. Here's some more biomimicry. So now you need to judge everything you do on your operation by the natural system. What we're doing now is we're running animals 250 to 500,000 pounds to the acre. I think one of the most powerful books that ever helped me was Ellen Sabry's book on Holistic Management. That's the first book I read and I started questioning. Then I went to Gabe's and I've been around Gabe and them for 10 years and in putting all these pieces together, I realized now what the goal is, mimic nature. We want to run the animals like this. The concept is right now, is most animals where I grew up ranching, is the animals are just run all over the place. They have access to everything. The concept is to bring the animals closer together so that we do this. You go from here, same number of animals, to there. Now let's imagine, this was a, what we need to do is bring this and then incorporate our cropping and our grazing systems together. Now Stan, stand here. So Stan, tell them, why do we do this? Why do we want this kind of herd impact? So what else do we do? It also concentrates the nutrients from the cattle and it also, it brings some of the best animals that we can do to assist them in that. Absolutely. Thank you Stan. See Stan thought he was going to go to sleep there but forget it. This is a friend of mine who ran the operation here in Texas. That's a center pivot. How much time from here to here? Anybody take a guess? Ten minutes. You knew it. Now here's what we want. We want this kind of herd impact. Okay? Now look what happens when we measured, wow that was one out of place. Now let me show you how powerful. Anybody been to the Chihuahua Desert? Nobody. That's pretty darn dry down, right? It's even drier than here. I want to show you what happens when we do ultra high stock density in the Chihuahuan Desert. This is how much soil they've lost. I want you to look on this side 15 years without cows and here an attorney of grazing. You can't tell the difference. Look what happens when you group them up tight, look at the mesquite get choked out. Look at the mesquite get choked out. Look at the cactus. And that's only 8 to 10 inches, ladies and gentlemen. The urine breaking the cap, manure priming the biology and changing the soil ecosystem. There's a gentleman, this is a book I definitely recommend called Seeding the Desert by Masa Nubu Tukuoka. He also wrote a book called One Star Revolution. He actually believed there was no such thing as deserts. He believed that deserts were man-made. You know what? He may have a valid argument. If you look at the part of Northern Africa, they said that the historians said that Hannibal crossed Northern Africa in elephants. You don't cross a desert in an elephant. That's like me going on an A-1 tank to Sioux Falls. I'll run out of fuel. There was grass all over the Saudi Arabia. They have very powerful types of satellites and they see underground rivers and lakes. Is it possible that cedars of Lebanon, they're gone? Now, this is Gabe Brown's place where he's grouping the animals tightly while I was there last week. There's his tools we use. How many of you have seen this tool? You know what that is, anybody? It's a bat latch, huh? This is a really cool tool. Power powered, battery operated, timer, buzzard goes off, cows hear the buzzard, bungee cord releases, they move by themselves, brook, I'm messing that up all the time when I look how cool that does that. And look how you set up the paddocks, one hour. Let me show you, you can do it with two cows in five acres, look at that. Now this was taken last week, look at those pastures, beautiful diversity. We were out there with his chickens, Gabe Brown, I was there with him, I'm going to show you a picture. He hands the chickens following the herd, he puts them out there, they eat the maggots right off the cow pie. He sells the chickens for, the eggs are 350 to 450 a dozen, got a solar power, he's got it, that trailer has no floor. Here he is, direct marking, I was taking the picture, he had over a hundred cartons sold in two and a half hours. He sold a hundred cartons in two and a half hours. They were gone, he was selling beef at $9 a pound. You know what the first thing they asked him, did they ask him that he was organic, no. They asked him where are you from, that's all they cared. Where are you from, they asked whether he was organic. He was, I'm telling you he sold every bit of it, all the eggs and then now he's direct marketing to the restaurants and they said, well Gabe, can you provide for us three to five hundred dozens a week. He is making quite a chunk of cash, him and his son, and even taking 30% mortality rate that he's bringing another source of income. And he's got a, we're doing sheep, oh, you know what the other thing they asked for? Do you have lamb? I don't know how many times I heard that. Jerry, don't, I'm up there, look at the vertical structure. Jerry now, the last two years, has not fed hay in North Dakota. I will say it again, place that gets a hundred inches of snow, he has not fed hay the last couple of years. What he does now, he plans these tall mixes and the cows, all these tall mixes and the cows get the mixes themselves. No hay, save $58,000, $58 to $68,000 in hay. They are grazing the mixes themselves, cows have legs, then he trims the edges for them so the hunters can go and hunt. Look at the crude protein on some of those cover crops. Is that pretty good done, 17 to 20% radish roots? Does that look like a good ration right there? Cows are getting it up themselves. Two years now, he has not fed hay and has done the cover crop mix. One acre, one cow, 300 cows, 300 acres of mixes, five months. Here's what we're doing in North Carolina. We are planting multi-species mixes right into our pastures. If anybody knows about, anybody have any experience with fescue? A pain in the heiny, isn't it, Stan? And only, the cows only gain half a pound during the summer because of end of fight fescue. So guess what we do in North Carolina, no fertilizer, no fertilizer on that mix. That is a eight to ten-way mix. The mixes got so tall, the cows were scared to get into the mix. We had to get the moor and trim the edges so they can work the way into the mix. No fertilizer, we grazed the fescue really hard. We ran the no-till right into it. Some actually burned the fescue down with the herbicide, but we no-till right in there. I am not going to ask the reason I don't want to put fertilizer. We have three to four legumes feed the mix. I do not want to fertilize the mix. We are grazing hogs now. I have a farmer in Iowa that is farming 1,300 acres. He said, I'm going to farm now 1,000 acres. I can make more money grazing hogs than farming 300 other acres. They're bringing six to seven dollars a pound in the Chicago market for not growing in a feedlot. Look at those grazed hogs. Now, one more and I'm almost done. I'm going to talk to you another about a soil test that's based on biomimicry, the Haney test. Most soil tests are based on the Bray, Malik, and Morgan. They use strong chemicals. The Bray uses hydrochloric acid, ammonium fluoride, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and then the Borgans uses acetate and these strong acids. The Haney test does not use that. It uses root exudates, citric and Malik. They're using acids from roots. What does the soil see? It sees root exudates and water. Biomimicry. Why am I a big supporter on this? Biomimicry because it's based on the right premise. If you are going on the right premise, you're going to come up with the right conclusions. Dr. Wingilasky used to say the soil solution is the blood of the soil. The Haney test is based on the root exudates. That's what's the H3ABs, the three major root exudates and water. It uses very sophisticated water analysis machines. It was brilliant. Think about it. You rewet the soil. You bring up the water solution. You pick up all the organic carbon, all the organic nitrogen in the water solution. In the water solution. Now let me show you how it works. This was just, now, and I want to make this very clear. This was known since the 1900s. This is what kills me. This information was known, Dan, since the 1900s. It has been in the literature for a long, long time. Now, right now, some of us are releasing, all of us are releasing CO2, right? Okay, when we were eating, we were releasing more CO2. When we work, we release CO2. The college station, this soil is less fertile. This one is more fertile, and the Amarillo soil is more fertile. The way it works is this way. You see the yellow lines is the moist cycle, and there's the dry cycle. When soils go through a wet and dry cycle, you get a release of the CO2 burst. Now think about this right here. Let's imagine we had a very, very dry period. We've had drought. Say all these guys in this room die, and then this room lives. These are microbes. They're all microbes. It rains again. All the dead microbes, Jonathan gets to eat on the rest of you. You get a CO2 burst. It has shown in the literature that 48% of organic matter is dead microbe bodies. So think about it. When you get wet and dry, wet and dry, fertility is released. So the higher the CO2 burst, the higher the fertility of the soil. Everybody with me. So Jonathan gets to eat all of you and some of the other microbes. When you die, he wakes up, he gets to munch on you. The more organisms, more carbon, more food, more CO2 is going to be released. These carbon constituents and molecules leak into the soil. All these carbon-based molecules leak from the top. That residue is becoming and it rains and brings these molecules down. It gets cut up in the water solution. All right? Now, organic matter, 1% of organic matter is 6,000 parts per million, or 2% of organic matter is 12,000 parts per million. When you say total organic matter, you have to be careful what you're saying. This is the house. What we're talking about, what Rick's test brings out is the cupboard. The cupboard. It's the food. It's the pantry. We want to measure the pantry and this carbon source is 100 times smaller than this one. Some of this can no longer be degraded. It'll take thousands of years. This one drives nutrient cycling. Let me show you another model of it. It's the active pool, the resistant pool in the stable pool. This is the doughnuts. This is the steak and this is bone. Less than two years, five to 40, a thousand years, okay? Look where majority of nutrient cycling comes from. The active pool. So where do we get our active pool from? We're almost done, guys. I can see it in your eyes. I got about six more slides. I lied, ten. Excellent. Did you hear what Mike said? It comes from the plant, water, soluble carbons, the polysaccharides from microbial metabolites. It's the active pool. Now, if we can find out these two pools, then we can find out how much of cycling can happen. Awesome. This is a conventional soil system with only, look at the water, soluble carbon, 160 parts per million, race, tire, soil, 347, no-till, multi-species cover crops. Look at the difference. You got better aggregation, better water-nutrient holding, weather holding capacity, all of it. It's related. Soil, water, soluble, carbon. I'm going to show you some of the things we've observed. Now, keep in mind, we have over 199 fields, and we've done this in 18 states, 18 states, and we're getting the data back. And some of them are replicated. Now I'm going to show you here. This is Mississippi soil. I want to show you. I want you to focus on this column and this two columns. Now forget the rest of it. This is typical nitrate nitrogen. This is a corn and soybean no-till. The typical nitrate nitrogen test comes back at 11.4 pounds of N. The Hainey says, no, you got 15. The conventional, the same way, 10, 16. Now look what happens with two years of cover crops, same soil types. 2.51, Hainey says, no, you got 50 pounds of N now. We are now able to pick up the other pools of N. We now can pick up the amino acid N. There's a nitrogen molecule in amino acids. Plants can take up organic forms of N. Pasteur, university, not the university, typical test of nitrate nitrogen, 4.74 pounds. The Hainey says, no, in that pasture you got 75 pounds of N. The forest says you got this much nitrate nitrogen, we have 70.36 pounds of nitrogen in the system. Look at the soil health scores. And from 5.28 to 12.45 in less than two years. Look at the active carbon pull on the no-till, 1.29 to 2.24. When I get soil samples from the prairie and from Gay Brown, Gay Brown has water cell you put carbon pulls of 530 to 570. He has a soil health score on some of his ranch at 37. Got a no-till farm this year, 38-39 in a soil health score in Tennessee. This is the experience we're finding out and I'm just going to read you just two of these and I'm not going to get into it. I want you to focus on the university recommendation for corn, for 170 bushel corn. The UT recommends 210 pounds of N. All the Hainey tests came back. Every cylinder represents a different management in this farm, in this plot. The blue one is cattle, the red one is turbo-till covers. And this is 20-year no-till four-years covers and two-years multi-species and the purple is CRP. In the soils from UT, it said everyone needed 210 pounds of N. With the 20-year no-till four-years of covers, two-years multi-species, Hainey said you need zero nitrogen. That soil came back with a soil health score of 37. But the nitrate nitrogen soil test said no, you need 210. You see why we're so excited about this not only happened in Tennessee, this happened in South Carolina, we're seeing the same thing. We said a bunch of check, a bunch of plots, this is cotton. Farmer put zero units of cotton, I mean nitrogen. He got 928 pounds of lint with no nitrogen. When he applied 55 units, 1170, and according to recommendations for cotton, you're supposed to put 90 units. He only got 1,014. Then my own producers here at NC in North Carolina, Don York, according to North Carolina Department of Agriculture for 150 bushel corn, you need 150 units. The Hainey test with his no-till field said you only need 55. Thank goodness he listened to the Hainey test. No yield reduction. Same thing with race tires. Race tires has not used fertilizer in 18 years. If he does a university soil sample, 150. My young farmer Russell Hedricks, 250 bushel corn needs 250 units. The Hainey said no, you only need 125 for your farm because you've been doing, he went from a pasture, multi-species cover crops, his yields were 220 bushels. Let me show you what's happening in Tennessee. This is a typical no-till corn and soybean rotation. Look what happens with two years of covers, multi-species. Went from this to this. Two years. This is our young DC. This guy is going to change his whole, he's going to change the state. He took his EQUIP program, he got 18 producers to participate, he's got 56 fields, 2100 acres, 22 out of the 56 fields will have a checkstrips, comparing the Hainey test to the University of Tennessee. Those numbers is the first year data, so keep that in mind. Notice this streak right here, that is corn growing out of its standing covers. Can you see any weeds coming out of that corn? That is planting green right out of there. Do you see any weeds there, ladies and gentlemen, with that cereal rye and multi-species cover crop in there? Here's what we observe right away, Dan, where we have rolled, and I'm just telling you, directly out of Adam's mouth, everywhere we rolled cover crops, he said, it has outperformed every other. Whether it's standing, he prefers the rolling. The wheat suppression has been fantastic, the moisture has been great, and the corn looks better. Right now, he loves the rolled cover crop. Last five pictures, my voice is going out, and you're saying thank God, get him off the stage. Dave and I last night, we were talking, you know, and I go all over the place and I brag about Gabe's place, last night, Gabe got an email from this gentleman, and his ranch is in Argentina. Are you familiar with it? Dwayne, where's Dwayne? He's gone. I want to show you, Dwayne, do you know this person in Argentina? Well, last night, we were reading an email, and I was with Gabe, we were talking on the phone. I just got an email from this operator, and he says he wants to come and see my place. And he says, after I saw his email, I told him, don't even bother. Your place is phenomenal. Let me show you. Look at his place, ladies and gentlemen, where he's growing all types of crops and diversity, and look at the way that looks from an aerial, and look at the what Dwayne is doing. He's doing like what Dwayne is doing on the strips, the grass. He is integrating sheep, chickens, into silver pasta. And he is doing permaculture at the same time. I was blown away, and Gabe said, wow, I love when God humbles me. I always learned when I grew up in the northern part of New Mexico, you never go to the bar to pick with somebody because there's always somebody more than you. When we both saw this, we were blown away. Look at this. Look at the integration of what that farm is doing. That is a function of understanding. Look at that. It's a sheep, the chickens, the trees. That's where that is a function of understanding. This is where I would love to see a majority of our country go to. In the east, bringing more trees. That's my dream to do with my farm, integrating trees, animals, all of it together to create this type of beauty. What do you think of that, Jonathan? That is impressive. Last slide. Last two slides. Ladies and gentlemen, that farm, I can guarantee that we just saw, was run by biodiversity. You have to ask yourself, every one of you, that farm in ranch, is your farm driven by here or here? Is it running on ancient sunlight or is it running on new sunlight? The farms that continue to run this way will go broke. The farmers that are run on diversity in the new sun will make it in the 21st century. By following the principles we talked about, and on my last slide, I think Jerry Bernetti got me this, I think I got this from Jerry Bernetti. You saw that beautiful farm? That farm is a functioning of understanding and love for the land. For in the end, we will only conserve what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. Folks, that farm I saw in Argentina, I want to visit it. That's what I want my operation to look like. This is where we need to go. Right, Dan? That's the kind of diversity I want to see in our operations. That kind of beauty. I want to thank you guys. I think we're going to take, Collette, we're going to give them a five minute break. Let's take 10 minutes, guys. Thank you, guys.