 In 2013, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service entered into a cooperative agreement with the South Dakota No-Till Association and IGRO, SDSU Extension, for delivering the latest soil health and productivity technology to South Dakota farmers and ranchers. A series of two local events were held in South Dakota, in Lemon and Fort Pier. Good, thank you, Ruth. First of all, a little pep talk for Ruth. Wow. I just want to say thank you for all you're doing to set this session up and then the three that follow. There's a lot of partners involved. I thank all of them, but Ruth, you deserve a hand just for all the work, because you make it happen. It's easy for us to just come and give a talk, but you're doing lots of work for lots of months, so I know a lot goes into it. Thank you. Well, folks, I know that it may be tough to be the speaker right before lunch and it might be tough to be the speaker right after lunch, and it also can be the last speaker of the day. It can be tough. So what I'm going to do is just kind of have a little bit of fun with you. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to probably say a lot of things different than what you've already heard today, because what I picked up in a lot of the speakers was a lot of common themes, and I think I'm going to hit on some of them same common themes. I might tell it to you a little bit different, give you a few different things to think about, but roughly in the next half hour, I just kind of want to tie some things together, maybe give you a few different ideas, share a little bit of other information with you, and hopefully we can have some discussion too. What I do want to do today is I do want to share a little new information that's kind of hot off the press last week about a cropping systems inventory that we've been doing in South Dakota, so I'll talk a little bit about that, and then kind of I want to say why we care, you know, why are we trying to measure these things? So I think there's a lot of important reasons about what's going on with soil health, and I want to just hit on a few of those, and a lot of them are going to be really focused on you folks, on the operators and the operation itself, but there's a lot of benefits that are off-site of that as well, so, and I'll hit on a few of them. So real quick, I always say let's have a discussion, we're going to learn a lot better if we just do it together. That means if you really have a burning question right in the middle of my talk, don't be afraid to stop me. You won't freak me out, and I'm guessing I'll bet we'll learn a lot more from that, because you've got to realize all the real experts in this field, they're doing a lot of the research and studying it, and the people are making it happen on the land they've already spoke, and so now you're speaking to really kind of a high level bureaucrat with NRCS, but the one thing that I do bring to the table is a lot of passion for this subject, because I believe that this is like the most important thing we can be working on, I think all across the country, but I'm going to just speak for South Dakota, and that's soil health, and it is our number one priority at NRCS, it doesn't matter if it's on rangelands, it doesn't matter if it's on cropland, soil health is where it's at, and that's going to be our push. First of all, this cropping system, so in the back of the room, if you haven't grabbed one on the pool table, which makes an excellent place to hold displays or materials, is you can pick up a copy of the cropping system's inventory, and it's roughly an eight-page document that's got a lot of information in it, grab some, take them home, share them with others, and study it. But roughly what this amounts to is that we, in our field office staff, we've got a route that they travel, and it is really designed to be statistical in nature where they look at the fields on either side of the road and they travel through, and in this case, primarily what they're looking at is the type of system they see that was used to plant the crop. So we break that really into three types, I'll hit them really quick, no-till, when we define no-till, it's not just I till it in the fall and then I no-till it in the spring. No-till for us is really no disturbance on the soil surface or to the soil from harvest through planting or to planting. We do allow, of course, some disturbance to get the seed in the ground and to get some nutrients in the ground, but primarily very limited disturbance. Then we're going to talk about three systems that really are full-width disturbance on a soil surface. We break them into three different categories really based on the amount of disturbance, the amount of residue that's left. Mulch tillage, we'll say there's more than 30% residue. If it's reduced tillage, it's going to be somewhere between 30% and 15% or 15% and 30% residue, and then conventional tillage really is going to be really low residue. We're seeing that drop across our state, but we started this survey again in 2013, and the last time we had done it in South Dakota was in 03, and really it was, why was it important for me? It was important for me because I just wanted to see where we were, and I think it's important for our field staff to know that same thing. And I just seen the four go up back there. I said 2003, Jason was giving me the 2004 category, and he's right on. So thank you. So just a few things that I want to talk about. We've got three charts here. I know we don't have the greatest screen, but I'll just hit the key things. The dark green is the no till. And then of course, in residue, as we go down, the color gets lighter. 2004 1315 data, bottom line of it was in 2004, in South Dakota, we had 4.8 million acres of no till 37% of our cropland. Now in 2015, we're at 6.4 million acres of no till. That's 46% of our cropland. Okay, I call that a significant increase really in 12 years. I really do. I feel good about that. You'll also see that from 13 to 14, we only went up one percentage from 45 to 46%. But the key of it is is there's a quarter million acres more of no till in those two years. Now I'm going to tell you this is not the most statistically accurate survey ever done inventory ever done. But what I am telling you is the trend line, I think is sound and we can feel comfortable with that. So you're seeing really an increase in no till, multi till staying fairly consistent, reduced till is dropping. We went from 24 to 19 to 17. And conventional tillage is kind of staying constant. But this last two years, it did drop some, but relatively low. But I'm excited about the fact that nearly half of South Dakota's cropland is planted with no till planning methods. And I want that momentum to continue. So you see a lot of positive things. And here we've got one of our producers just up here. And I really appreciate the fact of what those voices are doing for us. They are really bringing a lot to help us tell this whole story. So Robert's one of them. But we have many more and this this guide or this information that we publish is actually a way for us to help tell their story. So I think the statistics and the data that we're collecting are telling us there's definitely this positive trend, and the producers are backing it up. It's kind of neat to see that, you know, in Robert's case, Robert Corson County, right? Yeah. So in just a second, I'm going to show you a chart of Corson County. I'm going to see what I'm going to show you the impact you had, sir, just on the chart. So anyway, here's kind of a graph just showing no till increasing over since 1985. And then we can actually take it down to the county level too. And that's kind of neat to see. So really, there's the impact that Robert had in 2013. Corson County was 51 to 75% no till. And in this year at 75% or more no till. So that's that guy right there. Just one of them and others as well. But the key of it is is that there is this trend that's happening. You will see that in 2004, we had four counties in our state that were 75% or more no till up in this neck of the woods. We went to 13 counties in 13 or 14 counties in 13, we're up to 17 now. So there's been a gain. Central South Dakota has had that increase kind of along that river. I think a lot of the work that Duane has done and and many other folks have just really helped us gain the ground there. This year, between 13 and 15, we had eight counties that actually lost a few acres of no till, but we had 13 gain. So the staff in South Dakota, we are starting to talk about this more. My hope will be is that when we repeat this effort again in 2017, we'll have no counties that lost any acres that everything was a positive gain. And we just kind of see that keep moving forward. That'd be my hope. Joel Erickson at Langford, he's a little ways away from here. But when we talked to him about some of the things he was telling us about the impact that it was having on some of his bottom line, his costs, he was telling he was seeing savings in fuel, equipment wear and tear, some of his inputs and things like that. His yields were still there. And his comment was, you know, I was watching my costs when corn was $7 bushel, but he says, I'm really watching those costs now. And I think that this is a time where these systems that we're talking about and what these producers that are doing some of these systems can teach us is a great way for us to see how we can bring some of those input costs down. So now I've talked a lot just about the tillage system, right, or the planting method, you know that whole cropping system. And you could get the opinion from that that it's only no till we're caring about. And that's not the case. Okay, that's definitely not the case. This is way more than that. This is really about those rotations that have been talked about all day cover crops. You know, my chart doesn't say it, but Jason's right, it's got to be about the nutrient management, it's got to be about the pest management side. But I'm going to tell you to that I think this livestock is a key thing. Dwayne hit on it, it was part of a strategic plan. And there's a lot of producers about it. And in South Dakota, the newly formed soil health coalition, it's one of their things as well. So I think there's just a lot of ground that's being gained or a lot of thoughts that are being put together. That tells us we're going to look at advanced systems, they're going to put all of these things together on the landscape. And it's going to have a positive impact. So these diversified rotations, let's touch on that just a little bit. This is something that I wished we could measure better. I don't think we're there. You know, it's really I wished that we could go out in the landscape and I could tell you exactly what the health was of all South Dakota soils. I'd love to be able to take it down to the county level. And I'd love to be able to figure out ways that we could improve that. But right now we're kind of like looking at different things to help us tell us which way we're headed. I think, you know, I'm going to be interested in dealing with seed dealers and saying, so how much seed are you selling for cover crops? Because that's an indication that we're planting more. But it's really I would love to know how many acres of cover crops we got on the landscape. You know, it would be a guide again of how we're putting this all together in diverse rotations. Rotations is one of those tricky ones. When you look again, this chart is going to be really hard to read in the back of the room, but we broke this instead of into crops into types of crops. So the lighter colored is going to be cool season broadleafs or cool season grasses. Yeah, I got to get this right. The color wise green is going to be warm season broadleafs, sunflowers, soybeans, and then warm season grasses, primarily your corn, or the dark brown. You can see in these pie charts, just if you can't see a lot of the detail, what you'll see is those same counties that were heavy in no till that central part of our state are also the same counties that have quite a bit of diversity in their rotation. So if nothing else right now, while I can't tell you a lot of trends at all from this, I can tell you that there's a connection, a connection about making things work well together, putting that system together. So I want we I really would find like to find better ways to look at this data from a long term goal because I think this issue of rotation is huge. And I'm not sure that I like all the trends I see. I'm seeing some positive trends in some places, but I think we've got some room to grow in others. You look over there on that I 29 corridor, it's a little bit better from Watertown North, but that southeast part of our state, man, heavy corn bean, corn bean, corn bean. And I'm just not sure that's going to be where we want to be to really improve soil health in that part of our state. So it's going to have to be a prescription all across our state. I put that map in there again. It's a repeat, but just to show you that same area where that no till percentage was high to kind of a connects to those rotations. Lot of press just lately about this rotation thing. Okay, so there's a lot of studies out there that are talking about at this loss. And I really think that, you know, the work Dwayne's doing the work producers are doing, other universities are doing, we're gonna have to really study this thing more and figure out more how we can get more to rotation diversity. I think it's going to be good for us long term. Some of you might say it's a lost art. I hope not, because I'm not sure that we're going to get to where we want to be if we let that fade away. So we talk about diversified crop rotations. We talk about cover crops. Lots of producers put into work. We've just had Jason speak to us. It knows way more about cover crops than I ever will. We've got producers that are using them. The key thing of it is they're going to help us build soils. And in just a second I'd like to demonstrate maybe how that all comes together. But the key of it is across South Dakota a huge diverse state. I love that map, how it shows the different geology. You know, kind of just that land form of how our state was formed. 650 different soils. Lots of variability. There's not going to be one answer that's going to solve it all one silver bullet. But I think the key thing we know is that we can do some cover crops, all different types, different prescriptions. We can take soil that's in pretty tough shape and I really believe that we can make it better. We can turn it into a clod that really doesn't have a lot of structure and we can put it into something that looks more like that chocolate cake, that brown cottage cheese, whatever that form you want to use. And there's benefits that go along with that. You know, Jorgensen's have been talked a little bit about it ideal. They were recognized last night at the Cattleman's Convention in Pierre. Several of you might have been there. I know Collette and I were and they talked about what they're doing. But they're a great example too of where that livestock's coming back into that operation. And it was mentioned, I think, a little bit about the amount of fence. I know that they had put on their operation. This year, 20 miles of fence, all about really trying to be able to put livestock back into that crop side. And again, that's why I want to emphasize that with you a little bit. We were talking a little bit about that at lunch and a gentleman said, you know, in my country we're still trying to rip fences out. I think that that's that may be a short-term mistake. Maybe the fence is not going to be of quality enough anyway for us to use. But I'm going to tell you, my prediction is, is we're going to be fence and crop land again. We're going to be putting livestock on it. It might not be your livestock. It might be your neighbor's livestock. But I think it's going to be the answer because I think it's part of the secret for really taking these soils as far as we want to take them. So why should we care? Why do we care? Why should we care? Well, there's a lot of reasons. It's been talked about water management infiltration in a second. I want to just do a really quick little demo with you to show you that. We've talked to increased organic matter. I want to focus on that, which can lead to productivity. You've got this whole thing of efficiency and operations. People are talking about that more. Where maybe places are going to be able to save some dollars, input costs, and maybe just also increase production. And then that last one, I'm going to talk a little bit more about resiliency, the ability to bounce back. And I'll kind of give you a quick definition of that, that I think someone very bright gave. And maybe we can see how that's going to work. I think it's going to be important for us long term because I think if there's one thing variability is going to be more of the more a part of our future. Couple pictures just to point this out. I love fence line contrasts. I've got just a couple of pictures for you. This is in Brookings County, east side of the state. You got to be in the right place at the right time. There have been some heavy rainfall events in this area. And then right before this picture snapped, they got eight tenths quick. Okay. No till filled on this side. You see really no water sitting on the sole surface, no waters moving. And on this side of the of the fence, you got water standing in that soybean field. Okay. That water if it's moving off is not water we're using for crop production. If that water is moving off, it's likely going into a water body somewhere. And that's not where we want it. And if I do put it into a water body, stream, whatever, I'd rather have it clean than dirty. Okay. So we got to try to work to eliminate these things. And I think this is part of our answer. Rotations, cover crops, soil, health, all of that combined limiting tillage, because that's how we're going to improve that we're going to increase infiltration. So infiltration rates is something we've been studying a lot. We're going to do more of it. Just a quick little example. No till 14 years corn being wheat cover crops. We pound a ring in the ground. I'm going to give a sales pitch out to your NRCS offices in South Dakota have a little rainfall infiltration kit, cute little backpack with some rings in it. Okay. We'll get you more if you need it. They can come out to your farm. They could go around with you. They can pound it in the ground. You can do some things. It's not a super scientific test, but I think infiltration is one of those things that bring a lot of these factors together. There's probably a lot of ways to measure and define soil health. But I think infiltration might kind of tie it all together. So use it. We pound that in the ground, we put a little cellophane, we pour some water in there just the right amount to be about an inch to slowly pull the cellophane away just so you don't really disturb the servants. Measure how long it takes. On this side was 45 seconds. On that side, which was conventionally tilled spring, disk, corn, soybean 18 minutes and 30 seconds. You get that eight tenths of an inch, you get an inch rainstorm. 18 minutes may not allow you to get that in the ground. It may be running off. I think 45 seconds is probably going to get in the ground, and that's where you're going to be able to use it. So keep in mind this whole infiltration thing. The neat thing of it is, is these voices of which Roberts won, and I really appreciate him doing that, is that these are the folks that are really seeing it happen on their landscape, okay, on their fields. They're seeing the difference and they're sharing their stories with you. So I just encourage you that if you go to the NRCS website for South Dakota, which is simple, and this is on some paperwork back there, www.sd.nrcs.usda.gov. If you go to that website and then click on the soil health symbol, this unlock the secrets of the soil, you're going to be able to go and see all these profiles, and we're doing more and more of them. We've got about 80 of these folks scattered across our state now, literally in every county, we're trying to write their profiles. We don't have them all done, but they're people that you can learn from. And we would love to have more of you as you start implementing systems, or you probably, maybe you even have these systems in place. And we'd love to have you tell your story as well, because there's no doubt producers learn better from other producers than they're ever going to learn from me or anybody else. Okay. So a few things on organic matter, that gets a little dark. But a lot of the points that have already been made to you is that if you look at on different, this is a silt loam soil, and this is looking at percent of water by volume, and this is looking at organic matter. This is 0246 percent. Sorry, that's showing up bad. The key is, is that amount of available water capacity. So look at the difference when it happens. This this line is meant to represent permanent wilting point. That's kind of when the soil will not release water anymore to the plant. This here is really meant to be the field capacity, the amount of water that can really be held before it wants to run out the bottom of the soil. Okay. That's my very unscientific definition. Look at the different, the difference when we get up to that four and six percent and the amount of water that's available. Same thing that's been said all morning, but for me, a picture is where the thousand words in this picture just hits me and says, if I can increase organic matter, I can have more water that I can hang on to and use. We usually say that for every percent organic matter increase, the soil can hold another 600 or 16,500 gallons down to one foot depth. And I've even seen some, I cannot say statistics very well sometimes, but I've even seen some that will even reference depths less than 12 inches for that 16,500 gallons. But the key of it is you guys know if you can store more moisture, it's going to help get you through periods that are dry and it's going to help you produce more bushels. So again, think about I'm going to raise organic matter, I'm going to be able to infiltrate water, I'm going to be able to hold water and I'm going to be able to use it to raise crops. There's also value in that organic matter. And I'm definitely not an expert in explaining this, but we've talked already about the nitrogen and the phosphorus and the potassium that's available in some of these nutrients and there was a lot of discussion about Haney's test and trying to figure out how that can help us pick up some of these things. So just know there's value in that organic matter. Here it kind of shows some increase too just about the value not only from the water holding capacity but also in nitrogen and potassium as that goes up. So again, just a picture showing that value. So let me kind of bring us to closure here in just a second and talk a little bit about this resiliency thing. This is a quote that I actually had put on my wall in my office and here on. And I did because really kind of into this soil health thing, but I really couldn't get a great definition of this health and I think this kind of says it, you know, it's kind of like even human health. It's really the capacity for self renewal. It's the capacity to bounce back. Being healthy isn't going to mean I'm not going to get a cold. Being healthy doesn't mean I'm not going to get the flu. Being healthy isn't going to mean that I'm not going to have to go through a surgery and have to recover from that surgery. But I think what most people tell you is if you're healthy, you're going to bounce back from those things better. I think the soil's the same way. Okay. Conservation really is our part about what we learn on how to understand that and how to promote that or take care of that. And Leopold was the person who stated that. And of course, he's the one that the award that was presented to the Jorgensen's was kind of named after last night. So again, think about that. To me, that health, that's resiliency. That's my ability to bounce back. There's going to be times we're going to bounce back. You folks, I've heard you talk some about your moisture, but what I've heard from a lot of producers across the state this past year is when they went into spring, they were looking for a train wreck. There wasn't a lot of moisture. Folks were talking bad. It was not going to be good. And a lot of producers have say one of my best crops ever can't hardly believe it. When I think about what things were like in the spring. And I think about how things turned out in the fall hard to believe. It's not always going to be that way. It's not long ago, 2012 map in September that was showing some drought impacts across the country. There's a lot of folks right now in this whole climate change thing. And I know when you bring up climate change, some people get turned off by it. But I think that there's enough people studying it that are telling us it's going to be more volatile. There's going to be bigger swings. There's some things happening that you're just, it's going to be hard to dispute. There's people that are saying that before this decades or this centuries up there's going to be a multi, they're calling it a multi-deck cattle drought in the Great Plains. So they're saying a drought that's going to span over 10 years in length is going to hit the Great Plains. Big impact. We just have to have our soils be as ready as we can to handle that. And I think by increasing their health we can. Question here, sir? I think that's definitely part of it. I think that the, it's the whole global warming issue, but a whole lot of other things are kind of like leading some people to that. Yep. And that's going to actually make it better. But we have released a lot of carbon that was in our soils historically to the atmosphere and are some places now what we're really trying to do is pull it back out and put it back in our soils. So in a way it's storage storing it, which could be a great offsite value of all these things we're talking about. And I think we'll have value down the road as well. So it may not you just be paid for a crop that comes off your field but you'll be paying actually to store carbon. It's being done in some places right now. So it'll be interesting see if it comes. So the key of it is, again, I got to get my slide fixed for this color. It showed up good on my screen but this roughly just shows that in 2012 when they looked at corn yields in crops that were following a cover crop, the average yield was 114. This was across a broad part of the country and without a cover crop it was 103. So bottom line, this whole cover crop thing, what's the value? What can it do for us? How can it help us be resilient? How can it be ready for this these times when we're not going to have as much rain? This is an example of how that can help. There was a question this morning about grazing so I took and put just a few quick slides in here to kind of wrap up on grazing. But what I'd roughly quickly tell you it's the same relationships. The same things we're talking about on the cropland side are the same things that we're talking about on the grass side. Dwayne says how his daughters were sick and tired and Dwayne and I got some kids the same way and a wife that's the same way. But it's the same relationship. So I mean mother nature in a lot of ways had it right when she had diverse prairies and things like that. So in some cases our cropping systems were trying to mimic that. But Dwayne was also right is just because you've got grassland doesn't mean that it's necessarily better than a cropland setting. I think that some of the things we're doing on soil health and cropland are going to surpass some of our grazing landsites. Okay. So you see a few words here that talk to you about key thing but they're talking about deep roots and they're talking about diversity. So we have been doing some more of our fence line studies. This is a barn soil. This one is invaded. It's got a lot of brome and Kentucky blue grass in it. It's been probably not grazed well not given rest periods. The other side is native likely well managed grazing got rest periods in it. Look at the soil profiles. Hard for you to see. This one's a lot lighter less organic matter. This one's way darker. And the key of it is it makes a difference on what happens when the rain hits the soil on that native site that was in good shape. The first inch of rain we put on there went in in 1.2 minutes. The second inch went in in 27.6. On the invaded site the first inch took 21 minutes and the next inch took 109 minutes. And these are the same things we're seeing all across the state. It's some of these same studies we're doing. We're going to get more of these out. We're calling them our dynamic soil property studies. I think you can just call them soil health studies. It doesn't matter. The other term maybe sounds fancier but the bottom line of it is it's really just about looking how land is managed and what the benefits are. I love this old picture. I don't know the exact county taking you can tell quite a few years ago good fence line contrast. I'll read the quote don't lose your reins it's spelled R E N I S and also R A I N S. Proper grazing means more grass more beef less sediment and pollution. Same slope soil rainfall and taxes. Over grazing never pays and here you can't really read it right because they got it covered up with a bob wire 1.8 inches of rain. Here they dug down and found the moisture went down to 6 inches and here the moisture went to 17. Again right back to that same thing about good soil health and a grassland setting. So as Duane said earlier just because you got grass doesn't mean that maybe the soil health is where we want it or our full potential. So after all that time I mean if they did that fence line study years ago and we're talking about soil health now we must have all the answers right. I tell you what we got a lot to learn. Still got a lot to learn. But I think what we really know is that in that soil there's a whole lot of secrets but there's a lot of things going on to help us unlock them and a lot of producers that are studying it on their landscape to try to figure it out as well. So I'll end with a quote from Hugh Hammond Bennett. He was our first chief of the at the time the Soil Conservation Service formed in 1935 which has now become the Natural Resources Conservation Service. But I think Bennett's quote really says it well take care of the land the land will take care of you. I think there's a lot of momentum starting with slowing down in the amount of disturbance we're doing on our crop land putting diversity in our rotations getting cover crops on the landscape this whole thing with livestock coming back on it to me a lot of optimism and a lot of optimism of we're taking care of the land and the land will then be there to be resilient and be able to take care of us in the future. So I really appreciate the opportunity to spend a few minutes with you. I've got this little demo I want to do really fast and when that's over I'm going to let you go. Can I get this just to be a white screen? That'd be great. This is as scientific as they let me get. Two tubes full of water, little chicken wire up here at the top. And I'm going to take two soil clods. I think that'll work. It's probably hard to shine light on it, isn't it with that machine? Got it. So I can only show these to the folks in the front. But can you tell us the difference between those soil Yeah, OK. I better show producers. You guys are like, they won't believe you. Looks different, doesn't it? This one looks kind of like cottage cheese dried out, got some pores in it. And this one just kind of looks it's like it's all together. This one is that same in its soil that I showed that one thing of. This one's continuously tilled. Corn bean rotation. This is the one that's been corn and soybeans and wheat cover crops. No tilled for 14, 16, 18 years, quite a while. All I'm going to do is just drop them in this tube of water. And I just kind of want to watch. I want you to just watch what happens with these soils. And this is, you know, all this stuff that's going on that Mike talks about. I can't explain it all. I'm not sure he can explain it all. But all I know is that in this soil that I would define as healthier, it is going to be able to handle this water way different. And this is part of the reason that it handles infiltration way better and it doesn't run off. And it just is really it's a much healthier situation. So I'll just put them in and we'll just kind of let's see what happens with that. Well, that's happening. Let's take some questions. Are there any? Actually, our sole health specialist, Jeff Hemingway, collects that on his farm and on his neighbor's farm right across the fence. And he's got a few of them in clods. I'm out now. Actually, I did this earlier this week. And I can't explain it all. I can tell you this one's not been covered with a bunch of gorilla glue or anything. We've been accused of that, that we kind of jury rig these things. But that's why we came up with that little rainfall kit to send home with you guys. Because I think it's a perfect example of where when we've done the rainfall simulator and we do tabletop displays, some people will think that we it's hocus pocus. That's the whole rainfall kit. Just let you go do it on your place and let you try it. Mother Nature will spook you sometimes. She will. I did a rainfall kit or one of the tabletop displays this week in front of the non-point source task force. I had a poorly gray site and a good gray site. And the water just went light right through the poorly gray site. But it was because it was going right down the sides of the cutter. I didn't get good contact when Jeff helped pull that out and stuff like that. So there are times, Mother Nature will freak you. Another time that it's been really interesting is like when you'll give me samples in the middle of the winter, which he's kept in his basement, but I don't think the biological activity in the soil slowed way down. It's more in a dormant stage and they'll act kind of different. So it just shows you how powerful that biological activity is too. Question. I'm going to venture to say these are taken in the top six inches of the soil. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. Anybody here want to take a venture a guess? The question was, I predicted that these samples came from that upper six inches of the soil and the question was, what would happen if you went deeper than that? I would imagine that some of the differences, they might start to look a little more alike, but I still think there's a huge difference in how that soil's been treated. It might be a little bit different too on how long it's been treated a certain way. Right. And this one was full of macropores. So it's not that the soil didn't go into this peton or this piece of soil. It went in. But it's also held together by organic matter and some of all those other things that Mike talked about and you heard other speakers talk about. Again, way beyond my education level. I can't understand it all, but I can see a difference. And that's why I like to show it. And so if you had a soil surface with this kind of soil and that's what happens to that surface, any kind of structure or macropores you've got to carry soil, they're going to immediately get plugged. It's going to seal over. It's going to look like that soybean field that had the heavy rain. This side is going to allow that water to continue to move through it and move down. There's structure and it's structure that's got strength. Any other questions? Otherwise, I really appreciate your time. Ruth, I never watched the clock. I don't have a clue what time it is, but thank you so much. Appreciate you being here today.