 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 IGRO South Dakota State University Extension for delivering these seminars with the latest soil health and productivity technology to South Dakota farmers and ranchers. And I do a survey as I go all over the country. My question to you, ladies and gentlemen, when you're going through, learn about agriculture, and you have a person mentor you, either a professor, a parent, a grandparent, maybe a friend, they say to you, your job is to farm in nature's image or to help others farm in nature's image. To work with it, to collaborate with it, to synergize with it, and here's this word, to nurture it. Or that we learn, control and command. To be able to force it, to kill it, to use herbicides, fertilizers, which are not wrong with themselves, if unused unwisely. But I'm going to ask you, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you were taught how to farm in nature's image, whether you were taught at school or with your friends or relatives, please raise your hand. You are a rare human being. I'm going to share with you, ladies and gentlemen, I am a product of a person, when I went to Brownlee School, learned agriculture in the wrong premise. And I'm going to submit to you humbly, and I'm going to show you that agriculture was built on the wrong premise. It was not built on the premise to nurture and to synergize with it. The reason I'm saying this to you, ladies and gentlemen, because as I've gone through the whole country, I am observing the stress among our farmers, dealing with the climate, dealing with economic stress. I started experiencing that with my farmer, when we lived in Idaho, that was going broke. And he could not bring this into the operation. And I said to myself, how many anchors do we need to farm to really support the family? Why are we farming thousands and thousands of acres? And why can't we not support the family in small acreage and bring the son and daughter back? Ladies and gentlemen, we are working against nature. We are working against her. And I'm going to show you today how we can farm in her image, how to work with her. And the way we learn that is to learn how soil functions. With that in mind, I ask this to the audience, I also say this to the audience, how many of you raise your hand would get on the airplane with a pilot that knows nothing about aerodynamics? Please raise your hand. You would, because you're a pilot, aren't you? Ladies and gentlemen that farm and are producers, I humbly submit to you, we are farming and ranching, and why do we know so little about our soils? Even if I went to graduate school for soils, I too say this humbly. I know very little about soils. We're going to change that today. We're going to learn how our soils work. And we're going to start off this way. I start off with this demonstration. I do not go anywhere without doing this demonstration first. Okay? It's 12 here. I'm going to select four, three or four persons to come and do that. Josh, you look like you're the perfect person. And I'm going to be like, you want to come up here? Now, you see we can project this one to the next screen. Okay, everybody see that? Everybody see that? In fact, people on the back rows, can you see that? If you cannot see that, I want you to come over here, because the next time you have a desire to run your desk or your rotor, I hope you break out into a rush after you see this demonstration. Because I tell you what, if I would have known what I'm going to teach you today, I would have broken out into a rush. What I'm going to share with you today was not taught to me at graduate school of soils. It was very disappointing. And the knowledge and the information and the science has been around for years. Okay? Let's go over here and we're going to tell you what this is. Josh, Levi. In fact, I'm glad you need two more persons I'm going to choose. I always like to choose the persons with the full and arled come up up here. Mark, how do you pronounce your name? Mark, come up here, Mark. You guys ready? You have to do the talk. No, I'm just kidding. I don't want to get all stressed here all of a sudden. You'll walk away. I had one lady refused to come up here. She was very shy. Come here. Okay, we're going to start. You guys get ready to get you involved. You and I don't trip. Okay, this test is called the Slake or Aggregate Stability Test. It is one test. It is only one indicator of soil health. When you go to the doctor, the doctor does many tests. He does a blood sample, a urine sample, a saliva sample. He does many tests. Catskin. He will tell about function. He will talk about health indicators. They can tell if you're functioning. This is one indicator to show if your soil is healthy or functioning. But it is only one indicator. It will not work on all farms. It will work on 95 to 98% of the farms. And the reason it won't work because of the mineralogy. It just won't slake. Slaking means it's starting to fall apart. So what we're going to do is Josh is going to hold my North Carolina soils. This one. I want you to show the picture of that. Look at the soils. These are the same soils. This is Ray Star's soil. This is conventional soils from Piedmont soils. These are inherently poor soils. They're not high in fertility. Very acidic. Organic matter is half a percent to one percent on that soil. Pan over here. This is Ray's diuresoil. His organic matter is four to six and a half percent. We just measured it about three or four or five months ago. Same soils, one mile apart. This is conventional vegetable. This is a silage operation stocker feeder. How do you get soils like that? Because the native soils in North Carolina before Europeans entered were three percent. How did he beat the forest? Zero tillage. And I mean zero tillage. Multi-species cover crops. He's been doing multi-species cover crops for 20, 30 years before they even became sexy. He puts manure. He does not have manure enough to go back on the land because of cover enough. He no longer uses inorganic nitrogen. He has not used inorganic phosphorus in nine years. He has gone down from five river sites down to one. Producers, you should be able to do the math on the head if it's economically viable, understanding soil health. I always bring my North Carolina soil. And then, young man, you're going to do the beautiful South Dakota, the dark soils. On the right hand, Jeff, tell us the management, please. The conventional. Conventional, too. Corn soybeans, long surface in it for years, actually within weeks, probably 15 years ago. At this point, we're looking at a spring tillage system. Typically spring disking to that tillage operation on that. The corn soybean week, with cover crop calling, the wheat within rotation. The no-till for 15 years. Same soil, actually both of these are collected right across the fence from each other. Same soil in it, long surface. Okay. Thank you, Jeff. Now, I want you to do this and you're on operation. How many of you guys have seen the blue mid-busters? You guys have seen that? And they tell you, I'm a professional, don't do this. You'll get hurt. I want you to do this on your farm. The only thing that makes me hurt is your feelings. Okay? Ready? Let's come up here. We're going to gently drop these pads, these claws into the soil. And this is the way it's going to work. As the water rushes in to fill the pore spaces, internal pressures are going to build up. If the biotic glues and the cementing agents are not present, they will start to slake and fall apart. If it falls apart, no porosity. No porosity, no infiltration. We want our soil to hold together as those pressures build up. This will show us if these biotic glues, these organic matter complexes, these organic matter is present in the soil. Okay? Ready? Go ahead and gently drop them in through the container. Now, I always collect our North Carolina soils. I collect soils from here. I collect soils from Iowa. Get this in Hawaii. I've done this in Alaska. And the same thing happens all over the planet where you have soil. This happens. Now, look at here. These two that are falling, I call these high stress systems. When I say the word disturbance, I like the word stress. One thing our soils can handle. Our soils can handle acute stresses, but it cannot handle chronic stress. Very similar with the body. The human body can handle acute stress. Like if you lift weights, it relies on that. That stress, it can handle the stress. It was designed. Our ecosystems, our soil ecosystems can handle stress, but they cannot handle chronic stress. Chronic stress is when you put too much fungicide, insecticide, chemical fertilizer and tillage, and then it collapses just like the human body. It gets sick. These soils, look how they're falling apart. Look at here. Let's put these two soils together. Total different regions climatically. Look at the same thing occurring. If I dropped a priority soil, if I dropped a forest soil, they would not fall apart. They would not fall apart. Nature does not till. Tillage is the most intrusive, destructive thing we do in modern agriculture. It is destructive. Tillage is not your friend. Ladies and gentlemen, the farmers that are learning how to farm a nature's image are making money. They're making money because they're learning not to work against nature. Biomedicry. Now I have a question for you guys. Merv, why is this falling apart? And by the way, I want you guys to feel comfortable. I did not know this. What happened to the blues, Merv, and the biomedic cementing agents? What happened, guys? We need to know this. We need to know this. What do you think? Josh? Levi? We should know this. As you run that vertical till, you run that disk, you stimulate the soil and you wake up these bacteria called r-strategies or copotropic bacteria. They are opportunistic. They're designed to be in all soils. They are designed to be there. As soon as a carbide drops, as carbon drops, they multiply. They're designed to be there. The problem is when you run the disk, you stimulate it and they start to cannibalize the house. They eat the house. They eat the biomedic blues. They eat cementing agents. It kind of works like cancer. If you think about it. Cancer in the body gets triggered by certain stresses. It starts to fray the genes and it starts to consume the body. This system, if it's done right, it's a natural process. But when it gets sick and you create the chronic stress, it starts to consume itself. I had a rancher say, Ray, I am not going to stop disking. I'm not going to stop disking because when I do this, it releases nutrients and it's true. It's called priming the soil. I said, Mr. Rancher, I said, why are you burning the house down just to warm up a hot dog? It would have been better to turn the grill on. When you do that disking, you also bring weeds to the top of the surface and these soils are bacteria dominant now. And weeds love to proliferate in very heavily till bacteria dominant soils. So it gets like we did when I was running that hotel. I was not only destroying the house, giving up organic matter, I was bringing weeds to the top of the surface and the weeds said, thank you very much. Nature's scabs and healers are the weeds. Okay, let's go to the next place here. So, oh by the way, who makes the gloves? Who makes the organic matter audience? Come on. No lunch. The biology does. It's the bacteria. It's the earthworms. The roots, all the living biology. It is alive. It's they that do it. Oh yeah, and we have some chemistry. But it's the biology that makes the biotic blooms. Organic matter is somebody's dead carcass, urine, fecal, everybody eats each other. It's the metabolic processes when they decompose the plant, the carbon and the byproducts create these beautiful organo-mineral complexes. These are all particles in space and give it porosity. When you hell have porosity you have no infiltration. Everybody with me? Okay, now let's prove that. Josh, leave out this one. Oh, you guys did the last ones. Come on, let's do that. And I'll get you to do this one. Ready? We're going to make it rain. Okay, and you firm? Yes. How many inches of rain do you get? 19. Well, let's see what's happening. Conventional? No, too. And we did your soils. Because if I do my soils, you guys would say, it sucks to live in North Carolina. Yeah, we know how you think. Okay, now, you're going to pour. Now, it is only 6 to 8 inches. We're going to make it to distance. We're going to pour. And there's going to be holes in the bottom. And we want to see which one. And he's going to zoom in. And we're going to pour. And we're going to see which one. All we need is to place the soil in the surface. Okay? Ready? At the same time. Get set. Pour. Oh, my goodness, the no-till. So, if you have any more pours phased, raise your hand. And you thought that way. Everybody should raise your hand. You thought the same way! I remember when I designed a center pivot. I designed it. I get a phone call from the farmer, and the farmer says, don't you know how to do a center pivot package? I turned the water on. And all the water ran off my field. defend myself. I had not known he had dissed and destroyed the integrity of the soil. The biology blues and the cementing agents were not there and the water ran off. Look at that. Zoom in that one right here. Hmm. Isn't that interesting? It is the living bio... I have never thought that the microbe were connected to the water cycle. No microbes, no water cycle. The water cycle is complete when the water goes into the soil, not run off. I told the EPA, EPA, we don't have a run-off problem. We have an infiltration problem, a soil function problem. Now, we've got another demo. Let's stand up these guys right here, right here like a mug shot. Okay, Josh, you hold this. We've got another demo, Levi. Now gentlemen, you're going to be our little rain clouds, okay? Come on this side. Now, it's got holes on top, okay? Okay, can you guys do this? Okay, what we're going to do before you do that, we're going to make it rain. Now, keep in mind this was only eight inches. Can you imagine when the rain drop comes from the sky, it's coming again to 20 miles an hour? And it plugged the macropores on this one with only eight inches. Now let's see what happens when we don't have aggregates to billy. The aggregates in the soil, these glues that fuse them only last 27 days in a typical agro ecosystem. In a typical farm, we have to build glues all the time. Let's see what happens when the glues are gone when the rain comes in. Because I've always wondered why do our lakes look like chocolate and why when it blows is the sky covered with dust. Let's look at this and go ahead and spray. Go ahead and squirt it. These are the same soils, same exact soils. Now the participants back here, after they're done, they have to drink that water. Which one do you think they'll want to drink? It's got a little bit of iron in there. Okay, that's excellent. Let's look that up. Thank you. You're a good rain cloud. Very good rain cloud. Now raise that up and show them, bring it down just a little bit. Look at the integrity. It's still intact. Look at this one. It's completely dissolved. This one has those biotic glues. Those cement niches, those glues help increase cation change capacity. It helps hold negative ions. If dipole positive dipole negative, these glues are phenomenal. But they only last 27 days in an agro ecosystem. So how do we get them? Carbon, food, manures, cover crops, your corn, your soybean, anything that leaks carbon and the microbes process it and create those magical glues. Okay? Now, stop this one here. Now my wife's from Missouri and those people from Missouri said not ready. You put a boulder here. I've had farmers say you put Elvis glue. I've had that happen and I said okay, Josh, I want you to open this up and tell me, tell the audience if the water entered that cloud. Okay? Break it open. Did it get all the way through? It went all the way through. Those glues are hydrophobic. They shed water. You can keep those clouds in there submerged in that for weeks, for weeks. Now, you guys ready to see the real fertilizer? Most of you guys think real fertilizer comes in the bag for $0.00, right? Yeah, you do. I'm going to show you the real fertilizer of the soil. What drives the soil? Harlan, you ready? We'll get these guys to do this. This is called the scum test. I learned this from Dr. Chris Nichols. You're going to hold that corn and you're going to hold that saw. This is what you're going to do. You're going to get this sucker like a little plunger and you're going to swish it around in the water and we're going to see these incredible scum come to the top. This scum, some of it's called glomelin and all these, again, all these carbon compounds that plants do leak. Plants leak this. Let me show you. Let's go ahead and do it and then we'll show you and we'll talk about it. Swish them around thickly like a plugged-up toilet. Give me some visual therapy. Boom, boom, boom. Why would plants leak anywhere from 30 to 50? Some plants will leak 70%. Weeds owning leak 20% of these substances in the soil. Weeds put all their energy into seed. These plants will leak all their energy into the soil. Why would they do that, Jesse? Why? Why are they leaking this cool compound? That's excellent. Look at that corn. Let's put that in here, guys. I'll make a mess. Everywhere I go, I'll make a mess. It's okay. Now, look at the scum. There you go. Look at the scum at the corn. Why is the corn, why is all these glumes, the glomelin and all these compounds, these plants will leak carbohydrates. They will leak sugars, proteins, natural allopathic chemicals. They have like a, this is the soil's iPhone. They communicate to these microbes and turn these microbes on as they, we're here. Plants communicating. Let's build a relationship. These is liquid sun. This is the storage that is storing and fusing our particles together. It's also a communicator to our organisms. This wine, this is wine. No till will not work without cover crops. Will not work without diversity. Agriculture will not work without a living plant. I can farm without fertilizer. I can farm without herbicides, but I cannot farm without a living plant. The soil, the plant is a transformer, a biological primer. It feeds the soil. Now, I'm going to ask a question. Why, again, would they leak so much of these precious liquid sun into the system? Gentlemen, you thought you were, uh, nobody's in the front, right, Chris? Why would they do that? It's like me saying, okay, Chris? Come on, Chris. For the next year's crop. Yeah, they're doing for the next year's crop. It's like, just think about it. I'll leave 40 or 50 percent. It's like a government. You work and I'll take 40 or 50 percent. But they're getting something out of it. What are they getting out of it? What are the plants getting out of this? It's with the microbes. They say, we'll leak these compounds and we will give you phosphorus. We will give you zinc. They feed the mycorrhizae. They feed all these organisms. They say, we will take the rock, the zinc and the minerals out of that matrix and feed you. It's a beautiful, elegant, collaborative, neutralistic association. We feed you carbon. You give us nutrients. Isn't that how cool it is? That is elegance. People that say to me, I don't want to do cover crops. You do not understand soil function. Cover crops are not optional. It's like a utility bill. We all love electricity, don't we? Suck it up and pay the utility bill if you want to farm. Once you understand how soil functions, you never miss cover crops. You never miss diversity because it runs the system. Would you guys give these guys a hand, please? You know why I have to do that demo? You have to drink the pink Kool-Aid of soil health first because you're not teachable until we do that. I have to go through this same routine for me because I had paradigms that were not so. I had the wrong map, the wrong filters. I was taught the wrong filters, the wrong way of looking at nature. Okay, let's start on our journey towards soil health. Okay, let's go. Let's see if I don't have the problem with this computer locking up because I had that yesterday. Okay, we have first people turn it on. It's working. AJ, now I've got two more principles that I added personally. These are the seven principles. When I walk on the farm in operation, they are always going in my mind. I run these in my mind, so when I look at your operation and you ask me to come and I'm blessed to be part of your life, I run these principles. The first one, very important, the right map. Understand your social and ecological context. It's context, context, context. It is so critical. We impact the resource. You cannot separate the ecology from the sociology, from the social. Cannot do it. We've been doing it for years. That's the farm. Here I am. No, you are part of the farm. It is your life. You affect the resources. The new one I added, it's called apply the seven habits of highly affected people. As I go all over the country and see the best farmers in the country, they are applying the principles, the habits of highly affected people. I bought this book years ago by Stephen Cousie and guess what? Didn't get it. It was like licking ice cream behind a windshield. It wasn't ready. So I bought it recently and I said, oh my goodness, unless you build these habits and have the integrity, you cannot follow the other principles effectively. You will not stick to it. You will still be out of context. The next one, reduce chemical, biological, and physical stress. He knows that you say disturb it. I like stress because the soil and the ecology is healthy. It's alive. Stress covered the soil all the time. Go all over the route. Synergize with diversity, rotations and cover crops. And the last one, integrate diversity of animals. If you apply one of them, it helps. But if you apply all of them, you will have true freedom. You will have true freedom in farming because your soils will get so healthy and you will not have the financial stress. We'll talk about that a little while. Context. Let's look at our context. This is the biggest problem I see all over the country. I wake up in the morning. I know on 99.9% of the problem, my wife reminds me. She goes, you're the problem. All of us are the problem. The way we look at it is the way we look at our soils. We look at our soils as a growing medium, a chemistry step. I did the same thing. Warm our social context. These are going to be the things that are going to stress our modern agriculture. Water and energy. We need to look at the global context. It is no longer about South Dakota. It is not longer about North Dakota. It is about the world. The Chinese, it was interesting in this 2012. They had a 60-mile pilot and people were stuck in the car for 10 days. They interviewed this young Chinese. He says, I don't care. I want a car. This year, they beat Americans and buying cars. Where is all the energy going to come, ladies and gentlemen? We are breaking the fundamental principle of science. You cannot have infinite growth with finite resources. Even bacteria understand that. No food. You die. Our modern agriculture is run by this, ladies and gentlemen. This is what makes us fragile. This huge, complicated infrastructure, fertilizer, herbicide. When people remember what happened in Louisiana and people were stuck in the dome, how long did it take them to get water? You guys remember that? Five days. I have a question for you. How many of you feel the government is going to deliver you when you have problems? Do you believe in that matrix and that structure? I rather trust in my soil. I rather trust if I work with nature, I can be free and not be dependent on that complicated structure. This is what makes us fragile. This is what makes us our farm's fragile. It is driven by this, the herbicide, the delivery of the seed for us to get here. That precious resource drives modern agriculture. It is not a robust system. More context. Context, context. Look at our soils globally. They are degraded all through the globe. Me personally, I think this is a national emergency. We should be so driven as people to change this situation in our country. Our country is not much better than other countries. Look where we're at. Jay, you've seen that. I was in Colorado when that happened. I am 53 years old. I thought I'd never see the dustball. We have been working on 75 years and we still look like this. We have science. We have the best science in the world, we claim. But why are we still here? Arkansas this year. This is Arkansas. Our soils are glowing. And I had a researcher from North Carolina. She says, well, we don't have problems. Everything's fine. Really. I fly all over the country. I took that picture on the window seat on the airplane. I told EPA, EPA, our lakes and rivers are filled with conservation plans and nutrient management plans, but not crystal clear with understanding. Why? Even Milton, back in 48, president. And there's our greedy attitude towards the soil and we want to solve it with programs. We want to throw money at it. This is what I see as I travel the whole globe. Even in Hawaii, everywhere we see the soil is naked, hungry, thirsty, and running a fever. Because we have a lot of informational knowing, but it's not personal knowing. See, personal knowing, it's personal to you. You understand. When you go to Dr. Beck's farm, you don't dig in the soil without permission. It's personal. I have farmers in Indiana will not allow you to get home with a tractor. They think they're going to let their workers put the lunchbox on the tractor. Too much weight. I was talking to Rick this morning. He travels that. He watches his. Rick Beaver. He, every morning he gets up and he goes, communicates with the soil. He's probably going out there and digging into that small soil and smelling the actinobacteria. Scientists have shown when you smell that earthy smell, it actually makes you, increases your endorphins, makes you happy. So Rick in the back 40, he's getting happy. He's getting happy. Told anybody see you that they know you're disturbed. Too much cover crops. I've been accused of that. This is the science that we missed in agronomy that they didn't give me. Holism, ecology. It is ecology. I love the definition of ecology. It is relationship, relationship to the plant, to the microbe, to us, those cows, all of us. We have organisms in us. They're on us. They're ubiquitous. They're everywhere. Everything is connected. One of the principles you can learn. You're connected to everything. In fact Eric here has four to six pounds of organisms in him and on him. In fact, they're part of us. Everything's connected. Everything is a whole. We need to conceive the holes and patterns. Now here's the science that I think is just phenomenal. It's going to change modern agriculture. It's changing our world. It is called the science of biomimicry. I made this one up, Jay, called eco-mimicry. Eco means the house. Mimic nature. Eco is the house. Dr. Janine Vania says she's got 3.8 billion years of research to develop. The nature has about 10 to 30 million species. Let's see what we can do to engineer by mimicking nature. She says let's look at the ideas of biology. Velcro was designed by a weed, the burr, those little hooks. The engineers said, hey, I'll create this and become a millionaire. Very cool. Biomimicry. They are creating the holes of the ship, this outer skin, and shaking it like a shark because the way it glides through, it reduces fuel usage. Crips are lost by 5 percent. Biomimicry. How did the Wright brothers learn how to fly, Ellen? Did they just get hot and eat mushrooms? They watched the birds. How about in this other country, they are using biomimicry in Zambawi, and they are building the buildings like termites and their mounts. They are so efficient. They reduced their air conditioning costs by 90 percent by watching the termites and designing the outer skins of it. Biomimicry strategies. Biomimicry has been around for a long time, ladies and gentlemen. It's in the Bible. It's been saying, ask the beast and they will teach you. Look at the birds. You know why we missed it? It was in front of our face. She says, why don't we learn how to farm like a prairie in the forest? Brian, what can we learn from those pictures? When do you observe today? Does it get fertilized at night? Somebody coming from the co-op and fertilizing it? What's going on there? What can we observe from that? It's diverse, isn't it? It's covered in 24-7. What is the artillery's machine? Earthworms, the arthropods, the critters. They aerate that soil. The roots of the plants. Talking about it, now you're probably saying, Ray, you're stretching this. Really. Scientists say, look, the applications and principles and patterns can apply into agriculture, but it's rarely applied. Look at the researchers. People have been observing this for years. Why is this coming out now? Because we're desperate. Fertile people are feeling the pressure and the stress, the climatic, the economic. We're finding saying, look, sober up. Let's look to nature. This is the most powerful tool besides understanding. It is a shovel. I'm going to ask you, ladies and gentlemen, producers, how many of you use this precious tool to communicate with your soil on a regular basis? Excellent. There's an anomaly here in the forest. I usually only see one. Maybe not even one. This is encouraging. Okay. When I dig into your soil, this is what my customer soil will tell me when I dig into your soil. I want to see four to five earthworms at the minimum for shovelful. That means I'll have 850 to a million and a half earthworms that can churn about 18 tons of soil in a year, an acre. They will regenerate that soil in 27 years. Your whole farm will be regenerated in 27 years. They will purge the E. coli, the semidillo of the soil. Those little vacuum cleaners, they go in there and they suck those particles and they release these powerful enzymes and cause the little protozoa to explode and they poop out this rich phosphorus nitrogen rich poop. They're awesome. They are called the soil engineer indicators of health, soil engineers, keystone organisms, earthworms. They are needed in the system. Aggregates, cottage cheese. I want to see cottage cheese in your soil. So when I look at it, it should look like cottage cheese. If you see no cottage cheese, I'll show you a better picture. That is indicative. You're chilling too much and it's carbon starved. It takes energy to build the aggregates. The aggregates in the pores are the lungs and the circulatory system of the soil. I want to see living roots and I want to see residue called the detritus sphere. I want to see all those present. Every one of those have to be present. Every one of them. I don't want to see any of them missing. If I dig into forest, if I dig into prairie, if I dig in a healthy zero-till system, they will be present. This is a sand being fused together by these biotic blues. I want to see all that present. This is how they look. Aggregates, they're kind of a fused aggregate. These are biologically done. Glomalium, glomalium, they create this. Look at this beautiful, elegant universe. This is a sub-aquatic ecosystem. It runs on water. This is a system of aggregates fused together to create these elegant underground cavern where they swim in this beautiful underworld. This is their world. What do you think a vertical desk or a telescope do to that elegant universe? It diminishes it. It changes its ability to hold water and to filtrate. You can see it when we did it here. Let's look at Odette Menard's picture from Canada. This is in Canada with no-till going to Quebec where no-till is not supposed to work because it's too cold. Look at the earthworms. Take that and bring that. I never knew that earthworms can be that strong. This was taken with a special camera at night. It is absolutely beautiful. This is the reason I do not go out of my garden at night. I disappeared. He's gone. Look out. Now what do we do with our residue? We bail it, we disc it, we burn it, we ship it up, and then you go to the co-op and write the front of the check. This is precious carbon. I do not give my carbon. That runs the system. How about that earthworm? I will say, Jay, you go check the corn. And no, you go check. No, I'm not going to check. You check. Look at how it changes. This is a model of these latex material. They pour into these wormholes. Can you imagine the infiltration rate? So when you've been in drought and all of a sudden you get a massive one or two-inch rain, everything infiltrates. Some of our forests, some of our prairies, 27 to 50 inches per hour. Now if you run the disc, you sever that beautiful elegance and break it up. I move my cows. I manage everything to make sure that these babies are taken care of. They drive the system. I got to be cognizant. So when you get up in the morning and your wife asks you, what are you doing, husband? I'm going to make sure my micro herd is taken care of. We don't think that way. We've got to go see what chores we have to do, right? And they don't. Look at these precious protozoa. The protozoa are like this cheetahs in the hyenas of the Serengeti. Protozoas eat the bacteria. The bacteria are like the Giselles. It sucks to be raised up as a bacteria. You know you're going to be... This is part of the nutrient cycle. What causes them to come? Once you put a living root, here come the bacteria. They multiply and then here comes the cheetahs and the hyenas. Nimitodes, there are good nimitodes. We need nimitodes. When the nimitodes and the protozoa eat the bacteria, they release ammonium secretions. According to Dr. LaValle, excellent book on solicology, it says we can get anywhere from 17 to 116 pounds of end, just through predation. Where is the nitrogen coming from? It is coming from that. It's coming from a lot of places. We tend to ignore that. Okay. Look at the calcium being held. Electron image. Who would have thought that fungus are holding onto calcium crystals? Those are calcium crystals. This is the new fertilizer, slow-release fertilizer. You know what I like about that? I don't have to pay a special tech fee. I don't have to put it in a bottle. I don't have to go spray it. It's in my soil. They store the nutrients. I want my nutrients in the body of a microbe and the plant, so my soils do not leak. And the more I do that, I get to write the back of the check by the novel concept. How many of you have sandy soils? Raise your hand. Okay. Do you know how we can increase the kinetic change of your sandy soils? That is sand being fused biologically with the organo mineral complexes. Look at this sand particle. How it fuses and coasts that sand particle. Now I can regulate temperature, pH, makes me potential, electron conductivity, cation exchange capacity. Now my sand has cation exchange capacity. One diskey can destroy that little universe. That is my sponge. That is their house. This was not talked to me either. Who would have thought that organisms, plants, could take up organic forms of N? I thought it was only a monium and nitrate. They could take up amino N. That was recently shown in Science Daily. Mycorrhizae taking up amino N, organic forms of N, and taking it back to the mother ship called the plant. Look how powerful that is. These mycorrhizae. This is the influence of the roots without mycorrhizae. Look what happens when you have this fungus building this beautiful marriage with the roots. Now I can take up water. This amount of area, thousands of times of area. Huge. Now I can bring up phosphorus. I can bring up zinc. I can bring up all kinds of other nutrients. This helps me become more drought tolerant. 80 to 90 percent of our plants are mycorrhizae. Mycorrhizal, corn, soybean. But it hates this. It hates tillage, overfermarization, too much phosphorus, diskey. Hurts that beautiful, elegant underground soil web. Okay, how many agronomists do we have in the crowd? Anybody want to claim the third agronomist? Okay, Mr. Agronomist, what will we tie in college is the most limiting nutrients in the soil? Oh, boy. You cannot graduate until you repeat it several times. Natural, natural, natural. Calcium. Calcium, calcium, calcium. It is carbon. Carbon drives the whole system. It is carbon. It is the organism that will hold onto the calcium. If I feed them, they, I get the carbon cycle, right? The nitrogen cycle. I look at it together. I don't look at them as separate. Nitrogen they use, organisms use it to fulfill protein synthesis, but they want food. This is the food. This is the way it should look. If I take the plant and soil biology out, I have geology. It is biology that builds the physical and it regulates the chemical. This is the correct way of looking at it. If I had a t-shirt, it would say this. And I'd be screamed at. Soil is alive. The producers that understand that their soil is alive, it changes them. It changes their lives. Look what a living soil can do. This was taken in France. This is conventional. This is sandy soils. The conventional and look at the no-till. Why is there less known in the no-till? Audience? Why? Who said that? Biology. What a beautiful person. You got it. It's the biology. There's more of those little factory workers working. They can weigh up to, what, 2,500 pounds? If some healthy soil is always 10,000 pounds per acre. It's the biology. Okay. Now this one's a new one, Mr. Fuhrer. This is when I went to Hawaii. I got back from Hawaii. What a poor thing. You have to go teach soil health in Hawaii, right, Jess? I really suffered. But I had to take one for the team. Now in a hot, humid environment in the tropics, organic matter up to 14 percent. Then when we start farming, ooh, 7 percent. How powerful is the biology for regulating chemistry? Look at organic matter. Remember when I told you how organic matter is made? It is made by the biology. Look at all these other substances, but it is one. This one helps increase cation exchange capacity. What does that mean? It has the ability to hold on to this precious nutrients. Look what happens. This is Palau, Palau Island in Guam. A soil scientist gave me this slide. I said, oh, beautiful. Organic matter when it's at 16 percent. Look at the exchange capacity. Very good. Once it drops to 2 percent, look what happens. Same with grafts, same with ferns. Now, look what happens with aluminum toxicity. Look at the pH. It doesn't change that much, but once it goes down to lower organic matter, look at the concentration of toxic aluminum. Ooh, biology makes the organic matter. Okay, excuse regulating the chemistry. That's why we say highly buffered soils. This is what happens when you say foresters unsupervised without a soil scientist. Those trees are dead. They're toxic to aluminum. Aluminum toxicity. Bolch, look what happens when you do the right things and look at this tree. Now, look at here. A farmer that grows bananas uses hog effluent. Now, look what happens when the Chinese learn American agriculture. Chemical fertilizer, tillage. Hmm, which one do you want? Let's reduce the stress. Again, very destructive. When you till, again, we say the glues are not there, and it blows. The aggregates explode. Let me show you how. A good picture of this. There you go. There's my cottage cheese. When I see most soils, they're like this. This is what I want. If I walk into the field, this is what I'm looking at, Sheldon. See how you're becoming a soil whisperer? Beautiful. Can you believe those are the same two soils? They're side by side, corn and soybean. For years and years, nature's way of farming our way of farming. Good, healthy no-tiles. I have seen them like this with cover crops. Look at the electron microscope. Look at you gold. Zoom down. This is the upper nine millimeters. No pores. The no-tile. Look at the pores. The glues are holding the particles open. Now, let's look what happens. Let's see how this is going to do that. Here in Virginia, glues are rainfall simulators. Look as you're out for farmers to tell the story of what happens when it rains really hard. This is Chris Lawrence. Let's see what happens when the violet glues are not present. On the left, we start with a tray of dried booth soil taken from a clean-tilt field. On the right, we start with a slice of intact surface soil from a long-term no-tilt field. This soil is not only protected with a mulch of cover crop residue, it also has a stable porous sponge structure. Years ago, as a kid, I remember you get these big heavy thunderstorms in the summer and it would just wash the field and you'd end up with mud down the road. And I'm talking about mud that you'd go over there to the skid loader and scoop down the way so the cars could go down the road. What I'm seeing now is I'm seeing these heavy rainfalls and I'm barely seeing a trickle coming out of the field. After we simulate an extremely intense thunderstorm for five minutes, the differences are obvious. Most of the water we applied to this soil has run off into this jar, carrying away with it a thin but very significant layer of topsoil. That's Chris Lawrence for Virginia, but of course this only happens in Virginia. We just applied an inch and a half of very special rainfall to this bare-tilled soil. Look what happens. It just applied a couple of minutes when we harvested very little for future plant use. Meanwhile, this no-till soil has absorbed virtually every drop of water we applied. What little ran off is clear. The bottom line is pretty simple. If you want to harvest more rain like these no-till farmers are doing, keep your soil covered on top and make it a sponge underneath. Okay, now let's look at our gradient systems. Between a continuously raised pasture versus a rotationally raised pasture. To really see the difference, you actually have to be out there during the heaviest thunderstorm of the year. N.O.C.S. uses a rainfall simulator to demonstrate the effects of infiltration versus runoff on pasture surfaces. These pasture samples were collected from actual pastures just down the road from each other. And this is how they are rated. This is overstocked and over-raised pasture. The other represents a rotationally raised and rested pasture. All rainfall runoff is funneled into a collection job on the front of the demonstration table. This allows us to visually compare both the volume and clarity of the runoff. We have to manage the water. With rotational grazing, particularly during the summer, we have more water infiltration because we have a better cover on the ground. Essentially, the cover intercepts the water particle and allows it to enter into the ground versus running off. Look at this. By the end of the demonstration, it's amazing to see how much more runoff occurs on the continuous over-raised pasture versus the well-rested rotationally raised pasture. These are infiltration in the holes at the bottom. This is what infiltrates. Here you can see how much more water actually soaks in and absorbed under the rotationally raised well-rested pasture. And how much more water actually runs off. Okay, audience, here's your quiz. Why if I drop that aggregate from that over-grease, if I put a chunk of soil from there and I drop it in there, will it break up? It does break up. Drop it in, it slicks very little. But why is the water running off so much on that field? Anything's going on? Come back. I'm not going to argue that. What else? Circular sealing. I'm not going to argue that either. What happens if we got rain coming down this part to stop the kinetic energy of the raindrop? That also impacts it. And you know what we've noticed in hay fields? Even if the grass is that high, it still runs off. I don't know what hay fields are doing, but they are taking so much from the system. It runs off anyway. Doug Peterson showed me that. I could not believe in continually hay fields, even if you have cover, it runs off. Again, messed up the systems, this one. How critical is it how we harm? Very critical on how we disturb the upper surface. And I cannot, and produces, even after you hear this, but great, great. But I'm only touching that little part of the surface. The micro is on the top one inch to two inches. Look how critical if you don't set the equipment correctly. This, Carol, look at this with high disturbance with the drill. Look how it has an impact on the CO2 release. No disturbance, low disturbance. And when you don't set the equipment correctly, look how much water the CO2 is evaporating. Now we're talking about chemical disturbance. What happens if we use our fungicides in and insecticides capriciously? Because here's what we'll do. The co-op will say, hey, you've got a little spot of fun. We've got some fungicides, you have a little problem here. But I heard that George had this problem here with grubs. You want to put a little bit of insecticide over out there at the same time. Not knowing that you can hurt, you've heard the fungus, the fungicides. It affects the springtails. It affects the beautiful elegant universe of soil food web. And then guess what happens? You land up right in the front of the check again for new fin cyclic. Look at here a tropical forest. Look at the diversity. These are the components that push carbon through the system. Look at here a prairie. Look at Iowa. It's these organisms, the beneficials regulate the pests. What was it, Jay? How many thousands of beneficials per every pest? Is it three thousand or whatever? Lots. Lots. They control it. But if you go spray, there's no control because you kill your factory. You kill your army. Grow a living root. The other principle. One night, man, I was reading a really cool technical paper and I was really pumped up and I come out of the house. What? I get it. She says to me, what's wrong with you husband? I sent the plant and soil are one. They are not separate units. They are one. And I was so excited because the moment you take that crop up, make it one again. Feed it. Bring the healing. Bring the energy and to feed this beautiful universe. Most of our organic matter is coming from this. Feeding the system. The moment you drop that seed, do you know what that seed brings to your mind? Opportunity. Opportunity to capture energy. The moment you drop that seed, it starts making this elegant collaboration with the organisms. It starts leaking these compounds, communicating to the biology. It's beautiful. Look at how this is where life starts. This is where it feeds the system. Right here. This is why we want a living root 24-7. And you can see the little baby is grazing. It's like a little baby is nestling at his mama's butter. It is right here. I want this conduit of energy to feed and build my organic matter and get me off the chemical treadmill. Right here. I want amino acids, organic acids, all these compounds leaking in my soil. That's why we do all these mixes. We want it to leak and then we get a yield decrease called the rotational effect because your exciting biology that's never been excited before. Here's an excellent book called by Dr. Robert Pinton. About a couple hundred dollars. It just focuses on all the hundreds of chemicals that leak, diffusers, excretions, secretions, allopathic chemicals. Look at them. Look how powerful they even make your heads its own herbicides. This is taken by the Dakotas. Look what happens in early spring, weeds, but if you make a cover crop design, look at how beautiful it suppresses weeds. Oh my goodness, somebody's calling me. Sorry. Is there anybody's phone off? It's the wife too. She already knows I'm evaporating. She's got a peek into my head. Compaction. I love showing this one in compaction. What do we do for compaction, young man? What do we do for compaction? Huh? Yes. We chill baby. We're going to get the diesel. We're going to pump it in a big tractor. Horsepower, don't we? How's that plant doing it? Producers? That's a serious compaction issue. How do you deal with that compaction issue? Oh, those plants are heavily mycorrhizal. It's powerful excretions, bacteria can dissolve rock. The biology modifies the physical. They can do it. I don't need to put diesel in it and make the payments for a long time. I use biology. I took his Mr. Führer in Hawaii. That is solid rock lava. How did that plant do that? David Lamb, buddy of mine, was with me. He was like, How can that grow out of rock? It's a miracle. It's a miracle. Let's all repent and cry. Here's what happens. All of a sudden, these water lands, it rains, you get this crevices. Organisms fall. They start the process, breaking down the rock. A seed lands in there. You got primary secession. The enzymes and these powerful acids and they start dissolving and bringing in the nutrients out of that rock. Look at this plantation. That soil is this deep. Oh, but I got a compaction issue. Oh, you have a registered one that's all over the planet. It doesn't happen here. How about Iowa? Let's see what Iowa's doing about compaction. That you find in American farmers. And so when you say that they make you better alternative to tillage for compaction, that seems somehow counterintuitive and almost un-American. I made two guides from a higher stage who you decide to put conventional wisdom without a hit. We're trying to tell farmers that you cannot solve your problems with steel. You know, the steel is shiny. You can put your hands on it. You can spend a lot of money on steel. And even with the subsoil that may have minimal surface disturbance, it's really not solving the problem. You know, we're seeing that soil structure can be better solved by using natural rooting systems through our cover crops or continuous no-till from the cropping systems. We have some other experiments here that are proving that. We have some compaction plots comparing subsoil, steel versus living cover crops. We're purposely compacting these plots in the fall under moist soil conditions by using a grain cart and going back and forth over the plots and enforcing that compaction. This is very high-placed soil in Ohio. We're comparing that to using a subsoil. Oh, look at the yield differences. The cover crops, feed, fall. And of course, when you get some heavy rain, you can see staining water problems, you know, that show up between the compaction levels of the plots also. And the cover crops are outfilling the steel. So what's the explanation for these rather surprising results? When you look at a soil, you have to look at the components. And the major component of most soil is sand-silver clay. Now, that makes up about 45 percent of the really good soil. The other part of the soil we'll pretend to forget about is it should be porcelain. Almost 50 percent of a really good soil is porcelain. So then the most important part of the soil is the organic matter. That's like you're dead and you're burnt. That controls most of the chemical reactions. And most of the life is with that organic matter. You know, when you start to kill the soil, what you do is you burn up your organic matter. So in the last 100 to 150 years through tillage, we've lost probably at least 60 percent of our organic matter. Some studies say as much as 80 percent of our organic matter has gone right up into the atmosphere. And this is a good area because this was the black swamp in northwest Ohio. When the first settlers came here, they said our soil was as black as midnight. And when you look at the soil now, you'll see that it's not as... Look how hard that soil is. It kind of goes around. It's lost it. It's lost a lot of its soil. Oh, correct. I'd like to tell farmers that a lot of times when you kill the soil, you turn it into some net mix. Look at the traction. The soil is very hard and dense. And one of the things that we've learned is that if I was going to drill... Look at that crack. ...I would start with a small drill and then use a bigger drill to get through it. So that's what we do with the cover crops. The cover crops actually have very fine roots and they form a small hole. And then... The patriarch of cover soybeans. And those corn soybeans will follow those same channels down through the soil. And they also follow earthworm holes because earthworms are fairly big and they're also enriched with water. Okay? Now, cover the soil all the time. Okay, here's the other principle. Here's what we want to do with our covers. Right here, as you get the crop up, we have leaks in the spring when I capture solar energy. We have leaks here. We want to cover the leaks as much as possible. Cover the covers. Look how big, big Brent is doing in Ohio with his cold clay soils. This is a planting corn into standing covers called green planting. This is going to be the wave of the future in modern agriculture in a lot of the parts of the country where you're capturing solar energy to the last minute. You're protecting and you're nurturing the microbes and you... This is farming in a non-intrusive way. Isn't that beautiful? When I started farming like that, I got goosebumps. I didn't have dirt all over my face. My machines don't get dirt everywhere. It is awesome to farm like that. Look at those elegant covers. His neighbors, the widows come up. It's very competitive for land over there in Ohio. Very expensive. He gets calls from the widows and say, Dave, can you throw my place? It's so beautiful when you put those covers out there. And Dave says, sure, I'll plant your place. Look what it's done to his soils. It was the organisms and the plants and doing no-till that changed it from here to here. His soils look like that. Now he's planted... This is a soybean field that received no herbicide. All they received was rolled down broad. That field of 14 acre field produced 68 bushels of soybean. No herbicide. When the drought came, 2012, when he got aged as a rain, this is Dave's, 140-some bushels, the neighbor across the street, 40, 60, 70 bushel. Covers are spreading all over the country. In the Idaho, in all the little... Even the rural people are picking up about covers. This is a veggie no-till drill for tomato, tomato and no-till transplantry. Drop the tomatoes in there, go in there and pick your tomatoes in. What is this, audience? Anti-coverdrop cedar and sprayer. Why would farmers spend thousands of dollars to buy one of those? Oh, it doesn't pencil out. They do it because they understand soil health. Now, look at some of you got really excited when you saw a ladder on top of the other ladder. You got some toastering going in there, didn't you? First split second. Look what we want. Look at these other farmers. This not as pretty. Why would they do that for this? We want living covers, feeding biology, so if you harvest the corn, there it is. Look at what we're doing in North Carolina. Oh, Indiana. Ray McCormick. You remember that? Ray McCormick. He went to North Dakota, go see Jay and them. And when he came back, he came back and transformed them. He went to the Jerusalem of Soil Health to repent on his ways. He came back, looked what he built. Oh, look at that. I don't have time. This... You know Lucas, right, Jay? This guy is amazing. He farms soils this thick. He farms about 1,500 acres. I can't remember the exact. Last year, he did 850 acres of corn and no killed it. It's a standing cereal ride that high. His dad said, pardon me. Don't do it. Don't do it, Lucas. You're going to have a failure. The neighbors are going to laugh at you. He's our district board member. He says, I don't care what the neighbors say. I'm going to do it. Look at the slope he farms. He did it. He planted it and it was beautiful. Then McCormick came out and he got 190 bushel corn. He was so excited. He put about 40 units of end site rest in right there. The corn was beautiful. This year, his yields were 200 and some. And now he's going to do the mixes. He's going to start putting the legumes in with the cereal ride. We do it in North Carolina, where we're rolling it to get the old cultivator out. And we no kill our corn plant or our corn right into that big, heavy, thick material. We're using it in cotton, using it to spread it in broadcast stands. We're spraying. And the following spring, it comes up and you have that much violence. That's why we're increasing our organic batter in those areas. And look how beautiful that corn comes out. You see any weeds? We have, personally, through this in North Carolina, if we bring in our 15-inch rod and do cereal ride and roll it down, we could do no-chill corn and no-chill soybean. Not because we want to be no-chill, because it's the right thing to do. We're going to be unorganic because we don't want to spend money. We don't have to. And look at my instant detritus fear. Look at the temperature difference. 92 degrees, side by side, 77 degrees at your carbon. Now, synergize. This is how we design our mixes. We want to mimic biofimicry, the ecological architecture. We want that in our mixes. We want to get away from this, get away from that. We want this, but now we want to integrate cows into that. This is what we want, because it looks like this, the prairie, the forest. Okay? This is how these beautiful mixes look. And when you start doing those mixes, Rick, right? Isn't it beautiful? And guess what happens? They come. Synergy. Here's where I learned, and they took this poor little agronomist that was lost, and they caught him. Notice it doesn't say advanced no-till. It doesn't say advanced cover crops. It's not about tools. It's never accident. It's about the understanding. Jay in the district manages a beautiful farm for people from all over the world come and to see and to learn. The farmer said, let's do our own research. Let's get field-sized research. We have one now in Missouri. We have one now in Indiana. They are spreading everywhere. We have in NRCS, we have taken our plant material centers, and we are growing multi-species cover crops, and we are doing our own research so we can learn how to do the mixes. That's like I messed up here. Here is where I learned that nature is more collaborative than she is competitive. That's like messed up, but this is the beauty. I remember, Jay, when you first sent me this, I was a believer. And I didn't even see it by minutes, okay? I was a believer. They planted lutein, oil, fascia, purple, calcane, cocktail mixes. This is where I learned that I learned that college was not correct. I learned that competition was dominant in nature. Look what happens when you have a drop, and when they got 1.8 inches in a monoculture plot. It looks like death. Monoculture grown by itself. Look what happens when it's grown with the oil seed. But look what happens when you bring all of them together. When I saw that, because we got a lot of blowback by, I had to look at some of the research papers. And luckily for me, in January 30, 2013, a paper was written by Dr. Mark Perthes, Ecology Leathers, Professor of Biology. He says, natural ecosystem, he's done a meta-analysis of plant communities all over the world. He's discovered that when plants are under stress, they do not compete. They collaborate. Think about it, we had massive stress. Our forests, our quarries, we try. The system's more resilient than we ever imagined. Hey, how much time do I have? Five minutes, four minutes. I'll just go real quickly in the animals, and we'll call it, and then I'll wrap it up. Ladies and gentlemen, I went to college here in New Mexico State. This is the range site over there. I was born in 1961. I did not know that we had short-state prairies. We'll look back at this now. Prairie, when we don't have an understanding, and you use the tools incorrectly, now we have mesquite that evades the area. It shifted, this is called a phase shift, when nature goes from one phase to another, created by stress. So guess what? Our researchers blame the cow, and it does this, and we take animals out of the system, now it becomes worse. The cow and grass are designed to be together, not separate. This is where I was telling you about how we model it. In the book, Brazilian Thinking, this is how it's explained. Think about these bases as these energy fields, and how they control nutrient cycling. This little ball represents nutrient cycling, the ecosystem services. This is the threshold. This system went from this to here, and went to another regime, and went to another threshold. The goal is to keep the little ball on the bottom of the basin. That's called equilibrium. But when it goes to another threshold, it shifts to this, and it's hard to bring it back from here to here. Let me explain that here with our soils. Our soils do the same thing. It is no longer, that's why I hate when people compare no-jail to conventional. They are total different animals. They went to a different regime. They went to a different threshold. This is why we didn't understand no-jail, and it failed, and we had yield drags, because we were not understanding what the system was doing. But now we are bringing it back by biomimicry strategies. We're using cows and running like buffalo. Mob grazing works on humans. My daughter has been in the military five years. Because she's a lieutenant. Very picky eater. When they tell you you only have 20 minutes a child, they eat everything. Same thing here. They become aggressive. They bring in the, they push in the material. They defecate, urinate. They become aggressive. They eat the weeds. This is bringing ecological memory. This is Gabe Brown, and he's got thousands of acres, and he can let the cows run everywhere. He doesn't do that. This is what I want from the grazing. I want to see this to get this. And we don't do it all the time. We do it as a tool to do this, to feed biology. Okay? This is his tillage machine. So is this one, this is Gage. This is what I like. This is a backlash, ladies and gentlemen. This has a battery operated, solar powered, kind of bungee cord, solar panel, buzzer, timer. Set the timer, buzzer goes off, cows hear it, bungee cord releases. The cows move to the next paddock by themselves. Gage really gave, eliminated Ibomet in his operation. Now the cowbirds eat the ticks, eat the flies off them. Look at his son Paul, sets all these in less than an hour. Also to their running chickens, right behind the herd, same thing like the serengeti, the birds follow the cows. Here is a solar powered panel. I mean a solar battery operated. Solar driven. When it gets dark, those off shuts the gate, chickens are in it, as a water tank, and they follow the herd. Pretty nice because they're making about five dollars a pound for the chicken, and three dollars for the eggs, but he cannot keep up. Now, we'll wrap it up in a couple more. This was Chihuahua, Mexico, under very dry conditions. This was given by Jim Garrish. He gave my asking, I have you slides. This is in Mexico. Look at continuous grazing, 15 years around cows. Can you see the difference? Not much difference. The turning of continuous grazing, 15 years without cattle grazing. Look what happens when you do biomimicry. Rung the cows like buffalo, in eight inch precept. All of a sudden you're choking and killing the mesquite, the grasses come back, and look here, choking out the cactus. We have seen transformations in the landscape, by understanding, look at this ranch, turn from here to here, by using the cows, feeding the microbes. Okay, I'm going to wrap it up. I don't have enough time. Usually that's the problem. This is not trying to do too much, trying to do a five day course. And yeah, yeah, I'm trying to do the course too quick. Like here we go, last couple slides and we'll call it a quits. I'm going to let you speak to come up, and you'll have to be, hey goodness, we got March a little off the stage. Hey, my wife and I want to move to Southwest Missouri. We're going to buy a little farm. One of the things I want to do is get a little press. See, because I know the diesel was designed by Dr. Diesel to run the vegetable oil. I want to run my pickup, a diesel pickup. That's not my pickup, but I want to run my equipment. I have irrigation. I want my farm to run on new sunlight, not ancient sunlight called oil. Producers, why are you now allowing your soil to dry your equipment? When you go to Europe, you can buy a tractor right off the factory that runs on vegetable oil. You can be more free than all of us energy. So at the end of the day, some people say, well Ray, what are you kind of indicators do you look at if my farm is actually working? Some look at organic matter and I do. That's a nice storage of energy. But when it's all said and done, when I know that you're applying all the principles and you understand, guess what happens to you, to your operation? All your input, a lot of your inputs, petroleum based inputs go down. It goes down. And you start making more money. Because you are working off biodiversity, you are running on new sunlight. Your system is highly ecologically and economically resilient. Nature does not put our eggs in one basket, but we do. Corn and soybean. Gabe puts it in many baskets. He makes his system resilient. Am I opposed to these? No. But ladies and gentlemen, if you're really honest to yourself and at the end of the day, your majority of your expenses is to do maintaining equipment and infrastructure and logistics, which is drug driven by this ancient sunlight. Our producers that are working with nature are making money. Because what we have done, we have worshiped yield. And it comes back yet at the end of the day for highly effective people and the farmers that do apply these principles do not worship yield anymore. Because they understand that human integrity equals ecological integrity. I'm not going to go over all those habits. You'll have to get the book because the book is worth it. Leave you with the last story. It's a true, it's called a fable. It's because we're out of balance. And I thought this story was a beautiful, elegant way of talking about dollars. This farmer found his precious goose and it laid the golden egg. That's our soil. This is the producer. And he was so excited and laid his precious egg every day. But then he got greedy and he wanted to get more golden eggs. So he opens the goose and he says, no egg. See because we don't have the balance between production and production capability. What really is what we want in the future is sustainable yields. Some of us want 300, 400 bushels of land pushing it hard. That golden egg, they kill the goose. We are killing the goose. Ladies and gentlemen, if we help and be humble and understand our balance and this principle applies to all our lives being balanced, we are working way, we work many, many hours. We work so hard to maintain infrastructure. Last statement. The new standard at the coffee shop is not how much yield you have. How much money did you make and how you did it? Farmers for the 21st century that are going to survive are going to apply all these principles. Those are the ones I think are going to survive for the 21st century. I want to thank every one of you for coming today and for hearing me. And I know it's hard to sit for a long time. And I said, thank you again. I'm done.