 Today's event is a joint effort of the South Dakota No-Till Association, the Mitchell NRCS Off-Field Office, SDSU Extension, and the NRCS. And one of the first things I'd like to do is thank all our sponsors that helped us put together and provide input and money for today's event. I'm going to just read through the list. South Dakota Wheat Commission, Farm Credit Services of America, Wheat Growers, Mustang Seed, Monsanto, Prairie State Seeds, Next Level Ag LLC, Millboard Seeds, La Crosse Seeds, Dakota Best Seed, Adronomy Plus, Farmers Eliacs, Mitchell, First Dakota National Bank, C&D Operations and Davis County Ampliment, Scott Supplier, Crop Tech, Ducks Unlimited, Aurora County Conservation District, Davis County Conservation District, Hanson County Conservation District, South Dakota No-Till Association, SDSU Extension, USDA and NRCS, and Pioneer Hybrids of Dupont. So let's give them all a welcome round of applause. The first speaker today is Jay Furrer. He's with the soil health special at the NRCS. And he's been a conservationist, and that's what the USDA for 36 years and actively working on cropping systems, grazing systems, cover crops, livestock integration, pest management, nutrient management, and conservation practices. So, Jay? Thank you. Appreciate it. Good morning. Good morning. All right. I come to you from the land of winter, and we've really had winter, and it's been really significant. I mean, it really came with a vengeance, and it lasted a good, I don't know, seven weeks. We probably had a good solid seven weeks of 65 inches of snowfall, which came in a very short period of time and kind of shut the city down a little bit. But the good news is we're also, I'm also coming to you from the land of the dapple protesters. If you follow this at all, you know, we've had several thousand protesters camped south of Bismarck Mandan for, since last summer. And one thing I can tell you, extreme cold and snow does take a little of the enthusiasm out of the protesters. So, it definitely was a little bit different. But it's good to be here with you and visit with you a little bit, and we'll walk through some things this morning and kind of try to set the stage a little bit for the rest of the agenda. And some of you are probably as old or older than I am in this room, and you may be to that stage now where you watch Nova. Anybody here watch that television show Nova? Most of you kind of go and like, yeah, yeah. Even some younger people are admitting it, watch Nova. So, I'm watching Nova the other evening. And it was during that period of time where, you know, you already fell asleep in your chair and you woke up again, and now you're good for a little while if you've ever been there. So, I'm watching Nova, and they have a diamond. It's on carbon, and they have a diamond. And the diamond is about the size of a diamond that you would see in a ring. It's about that size, maybe a little bigger. And they subject this diamond to extreme heat and cold. And I don't remember which they did first, if they did the really extreme cold first, then the heat or if it was the other way around. And they have this diamond, which is 100% carbon. They have it in a canister that you can see into. And after they're done with this process, what do you think happens to the diamond? The diamond disappears inside the canister. It converts to a gas. Okay? So the diamond converted to CO2 inside this canister. The diamond was gone. It was in the gas, it was still there, but it's in the gas form. Okay? And I was thinking to myself, so much like agriculture. We don't, we can't really see that carbon leave, can we? You know, we've got carbon in the residue that's laying on the soil surface. Most of that's going to go as CO2 to the atmosphere. We have carbon in the decaying root mass. Most of that probably is going to go to the atmosphere as CO2 also. We're going to retain a little more of that. Okay? And then the carbon in the grain is usually going to get wheels under it many times. It's going to get a tire under it. And it's going to go to livestock feed or human food or energy or any of these number of items. But so many times we have this carbon scenario occurring. And it's production agriculture. It's our grazing systems. It's our cropping systems. It's our gardens. All of these operate off this scenario, which is just part of the carbon cycle. So we have that carbon, but we don't really see it leave when it converts to CO2. We don't really see that. Just like the diamond that converted to CO2. We didn't see that. You can't see that. It's a gas. But when we have more carbon leaving our soils than coming in through a plant, what happens to the color of our soils? We have more carbon leaving through respiration than we have coming in through a green plant. What happens to the color of our soils? It gets lighter. They get lighter. They get lighter, don't they? We can visually see that. We also usually see some other symptoms that occur. Usually the infiltration decreases because the carbon is the food for the biology that builds the aggregates in the pore spaces. So we observe those things afterwards. What if we have more carbon coming in through sunlight, through CO2 and sunlight processes in the plant? What if we have more carbon coming into our soil than we have leaving through respiration? What happens to the color? Yeah, they get darker soil. Soils get darker. They have more organic matter in them. And a lot of times I think we get real hung up on trying to name a system or a process where to me, if we have more coming in than leaving, that to me is a pretty solid situation occurring for us then. We have good things happen then. We're usually going to see a little better infiltration. Infiltration to me is one of the things that we can do that really help us determine this. And I was talking to some of my counterparts the other day and I said, I think for individual farmers and ranchers and for our own monitoring, I think we would do a lot more infiltration on the ground but it just doesn't cost enough. I think it was 50 bucks a pop. I think we'd be doing a lot more infiltration. But it's an easy item that we can do out in the foyer out here in the lobby. There's infiltration kits. If I were you, I wouldn't ask for one. I'd just walk by and just do what we do in North Dakota. Just walk by, pick one up, keep walking. Take one home and put it in the ground and see what your infiltration is. And you don't have to compare it to your neighbor or anyone else. You can just do it on your own farm. See what's happening on your own farm? Put it in your cropland, put it in your grasslands, put it in your hayland. Determine you need 444 milliliters of water. Water bottle holds 500. So you pretty much know already if you take one swig out of there you're just about at 444. So consequently you start taking a look and how long does this inch take? I had some interesting scenarios. I do quite a bit of infiltration because it's such a good indicator. And I had two loam soils on two opposite ends of the spectrum in Burley County. One real high diversity, full cover crops, livestock integration, the whole ball of wax. The other one is a fully tilled monoculture. No covers, no livestock, no diversity. So I did the one inch. So the first inch kind of sets the stage. You got to kind of get things leveled out. So you do an inch in each and I did an inch in the monoculture that was tilled and it was a little over two hours. So it took me a little over two hours to get one inch of water in the ground. I put the other inch in the other system the next day and it was 15 seconds. So now these are both loam soils. And then you got to do the second inch. So I did the second inch in the monoculture and I ran out of coffee and patience and I never got to the end of it. But when I left, which was well past two hours on the second inch, it was still there. The second inch on the other system was 18 seconds. Now the rancher, the farmer that had that soil that did 18 seconds, I didn't want it to go to his head. So I told him in a very German background manner, I said, you know, it could have been better. We got to keep them keep them in perspective, you know, if they if they get a little too cocky about the whole thing, you know, so, you know, it's the German heritage thing came out of me because that's what my dad would have said to me. No matter how good something was, it could have been better. Okay, so we got that we got some of those type things going on. So when it comes to to some of the monitoring, the infiltration, I really support it was really glad to see the canister bags out here, because it's such an easy thing to do, and do it on your own farm. And I like to get under 10 minutes. I like to get under 10 minutes if I can, then, you know, that's considered. We have some of the soil health parameters that's considered, you know, you know, that's, that's not bad. So if you can get the second inch in there and under 10 minutes, I think you're doing, you're doing pretty well. Okay, but it's one of these indicators that I think from the viewpoint of carbon, the food, the more food comes into your system, more biology takes that food and builds aggregates, the more aggregates they built, more pore spaces you have. Okay, and so it's kind of a correlation, and it's a helpful one. Okay, so I got to clarify something for Ruth Beck. She sent me an email, because I sent her a title, and my title was What on Your Landscape? And I meant, you know, What's on Your Landscape? But it came out, you know, old man, bad eyes, little tiny phone, came out What on Your Landscape? So she sends me back a very polite message. And the message said something to the effect of, you know, a number of people have asked me if that's really your title. She didn't come out and say, look, dumb guy, you messed up on the word here. Instead, she says something really nice, like, you know, a number of people have asked me if that's really the title. And I send her back a message said, Yeah, well, absolutely. That's, that's, that's it. Well, of course, I missed it completely. It was totally, totally my fault. Even in North Dakota, we do have a little bit of grammar, not a lot, but a little bit. So What's on Your Landscape? Let's run to that. Okay. My apologies to Ruth. My oldest daughter and I were scooping snow. And we had a kind of a hilarious moment because we were looking around for protesters and we couldn't find any that day. So we were just kind of talking about this whole thing. And no matter which side of the coin you're on, really, the protest is about the energy. It's about energy. It's about carbon. And it's about what the future of this country is going to do with its energy program. And, and the protests five different times I could not get in or out of my office last summer, because the protesters setting up couldn't get in couldn't get out, they do a complete lockdown. Then they would move from the federal building, they'd move to the capital, state capital, lock the state capital down. And so we had a number of days where you could not get in or out of these these buildings. And then of course they would move to the local mall and then the police would have to come in and there'd be a big tussle as you put them all on the ground and handcuff them all and arrest them all and haul them all in. And then, and some of these guys were probably handcuffed three, four, five, six, seven different times. And so they're professional at what they do. But I think what it comes down to, you know, it's the energy. And so you have to decide which side of the coin I think, you know, what are we looking at? Old sunshine carbon, you know, oil, gas, coal, all made millions, if not billions of years ago, versus new sunshine carbon. And in agriculture, we're looking more at new sunshine carbon. So with the Bakken oil field, it's not that we're out of oil, it's probably going to become more of an issue, can you afford it? Because with the three mile wells, it takes a lot of power and energy and money to bring it to the surface and make that occur. So I think it's going to become more of a cost item in the near future than probably anything else. But anyway, we were looking for protesters, but we had no sightings that day. So let's talk a little bit about landscapes. So if we look at pre-European landscapes, I think every community, certainly every state has some really good documents to look at. What did it look like before? These are ones that I use. Lewis and Clark, McKay and Evans, McKay and Evans is a book that talks about, they were map makers and they were there before Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark met with them before they started their journey. There's no recorded minutes, but what do you think Lewis and Clark met them for? Well, you know, hello, I think we need your map. Would you give us a map? And so the early history of North Dakota I think is one of the greatest ones for us because settlement in North Dakota started in the northeast corner. So in the very northeast corner of the state, right against Minnesota and Canada, is where the three large fur trading companies came in. It's also where the first farmer was and this whole thing kind of started. And it was in the late 1700s. And so that's where that process started. And this Loonesbury was the first editor of a newspaper in North Dakota, really a great read. And he had observations and he recorded them. He also recorded all the animal harvest from the three trading posts. So he got to see the extent and and what it was they harvested. So that's pretty interesting. And then Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, that's one Duane's recommended for many years, but it's probably one of the better recorded cropping systems pre-European in this country. And so it gives you an idea of what was happening on crop rotation diversity. So Lewis and Clark, yes, we get the diversity in animals, diversity in plants. We get a pretty good idea that there was a large population because they could claim to see about 3,000 at a glance. And then if we look on a little bit further and we look at what Loonesbury had regarding the Red River and the netting of fish, that don't happen too much there anymore. But at one time it did. And then some of the winter harvest at the fur trading. Then also the most interesting one to me was the bottom paragraph. On broken stream from Pimbena to Grand Forks. Pimbena to Grand Forks I think is a good hours drive. So from Pimbena to Grand Forks you are looking at a dead bison every rod on the bank. So if you start doing the math on that, that's a lot of bison in that period, that length of river. And then of course we took the bison out. And in the Dakotas it got to be a bit of a carnival atmosphere because people of wealth and people of royalty and different folks would come and they wanted to get in on these last hunts. And so they would go ahead because this is something that wasn't going to be there very long. One of my favorite passages out of the book was the young lieutenant that got so excited with his two pistols. Dropped one pistol, shot this horse in the back of the head with the other pistol. One of my favorite passages because it's a I don't know if I should cry or laugh passage. Then John Tanner was our first farmer in North Dakota and he planted potatoes and some vegetables. And he harvested a bushel and a half of potatoes and the horses ate the vegetables. So away we went. It was our start into agriculture and it started in that northeast corner because of the Hudson Bay. You know, once ships knew how to get into the Hudson Bay, away we went. But he's gone now. I'd like to tell you I stood my ground and took that picture but no, that would be a big story. And we know the plow up occurred. The 20s, actually the 10s and the 20s, high moisture, high prices. And so that's when a lot of our grasslands were converted, especially in the southern U.S. But also it was occurring in the northern U.S. to a, maybe to a lesser extent. But it was the set of times and then we moved into a little different scenario after that. Okay. So that's kind of a pre-European. So I went ahead and I said, well for present landscape I wanted to try to pick out resource concerns. So what are some resource concerns in our present landscape? Things that we deal with. So I did a Google search in South Dakota and it said you didn't have any. So, okay. So I went to North Dakota because I'm used to working there and I said to myself what is it that we deal with just about every day? And I said I'm going to make myself a list of resource concerns that we have to deal with every day in the northern plains. Well, wind and water erosion. We have those yet. We still have. Wind and water erosion. Salinity. Eastern, Eastern North Dakota got all kinds of salinity. I was talking to one of my farmer clients the other day and he said, you know, he said 30 years ago, I have one particular farm. 30 years ago I farmed 15% more acres on it. He said I can still drive over those acres. No problem, but they're all salinity now. And he said I can't, nothing grows and I can't harvest them. 15% of that particular farm. Okay. Now that means a lot of acres, likely. Okay. Season long grazing. That's been one that's been difficult for us. Season long grazing. We're going to talk a little bit more about it, but I'm just going to touch on the list now. And then water quality. We got all the agronomists and the crop advisors working on the front end of the cropping system. We don't have too many working on the back end of the cropping system. Meaning a cover crop to clean up all the inorganic nutrient at the end of the year and stabilize it. Take care of the erosion. Take care of inorganic nutrient. It's a safe place to put the inorganic nutrient. But we got everybody kind of working on the front end and not so much on the back end. And I think we got to start looking at the entire cropping system a bit more. And I think the discussion should come from the viewpoint of, okay we're going to put on this amount of NP and K. We're going to put it on in this manner. We're going to put it on might be split application depending on the scenario. And then I think the crop advisor, the conservationist for NRCS, the extension agent, whoever should then look at you and say, and what is the plan to capture the inorganic nutrient at the end of the year? I think that has to become part of our methodology. I think we have to do this. Drought and flood in the same year, does that make sense to you? It makes creepy sense. And here's how it works. We have a decrease in our carbon coming into our system. We have fewer soil aggregates built and our infiltration over time decreases. And then one day you get this quick two inch rain, three inch rain, four inch rain, crazy weather patterns, and most all of it runs off. There's your flood and a few weeks later there's your drought. So flood and drought in the same year, once you degrade soils, almost guarantee it. Okay, makes total sense. That's the bad part about it. Makes total sense. Lack of plant diversity and covers. We have that situation going on. We've simplified the landscape in the name of efficiency. And that's a human characteristic. I think all of us do that to some degree. You know, that's why I only have one wife. It's simpler. For 42 years it's been simpler. But we all as humans I think have a tendency to simplify. We have to be cautious because it makes us more efficient, right? We're more efficient at what we do. But we got to be a little careful when we have simplified something in the name of efficiency and we've become very efficient. We got to make be a little careful if we're going the wrong way. Because if you're efficiently going the wrong way you get there very quickly. So that's a concern. Exporting carbon. Old and new sunshine carbon and carbon deficient soil. So I just made a little grocery list and as we go through the program this morning we'll probably touch on some of these. Buck and oil field. That's 17 pumpers on a pad. So that's old sunshine. That's kind of what North Dakota has been good at over the years. Taking something. It's usually carbon. Carbon based. So that's the old sunshine. We got some newer sunshine carbon made with a combination of new sunshine and old, but we're exporting those nutrients. So that's part of this new landscape, right? This part of our present landscape. Agriculture is an extraction business. What are we doing to offset it? I work with the potato people in North Dakota and we're looking at a lot more cover crops. Because guess what? Our infiltration on the pivots improved. After we put the covers on the erosion went away. After we put the covers on we soaked up all the inorganic nutrient so we can start to offset some of the impacts of the potato production. That's a start. Exporting carbon in terms of hay. If that was a truck load of cattle, heading toward that hay, that's different. Because we can cycle it through the livestock. 80-90% of what goes in the front end of the cow comes out the back end of the cow. That's a wonderful deal. But when it leaves, that's different. That's not coming back. North Dakota's got a little issue going with native range land. We want to look like Iowa. And we are quickly hitting that way. That's very close to Bismarck. That was probably 7%, 8% soil organic matter. For a number of years I've taken soil organic matter levels on mixed operations. Crop land, grassland operations. Typically the crop land is going to be somewhere is half or less. There's always exceptions, but typically. So this particular loam here is probably was around 8% would have been close, I think 7% to 8% soil organic matter. It's obviously it's going to go and it's going to lose a lot of that quickly now because we're going to really send some CO2 to the atmosphere. Then of course our windbreaks, trees have been declared evil in the northern plains and they have to go. The concern on that is, that was one of the last refuge places for the insect world, for the pollinator world, for wind erosion, for wildlife. So these are not dead trees that are being taken out. These are live trees and that gives me a concern. As a conservationist it's difficult to watch that. We know there's some reports that have been done recently through academia that yes takes a 30-year look at diversity. Guess what? We have less diversity. I think we all knew that, but you could go into that report and it quantifies it. So you can take a little more detailed look. That's North Dakota after 125 years of tillage. That's a first-year no-till field in just West River and you can see the horizontal platiness. You can see the horizontal layers in that particular soil. So as we, for 125 years, we took out poor spaces in that particular field and it compressed. Okay? And now, now we've got to build them back. This is a field, I have a individual that periodically sends me photos, and not pretty photos. He sent me this photo. That's a photo north of Medina and it had virtually every resource concern on it. It had wind erosion, it had water erosion, it had salinity, it had all, you know, as I made my list of resource concerns, it had most all of those resource concerns. It has more carbon leaving than it has coming into it. Okay? That's something that we got to get a handle on. Okay? We have to get a handle on that. That, I'd like to say that's a picture from, that's a picture from last year, last spring. I'd like to say that that's really unusual, but it's probably a little more prevalent in that particular area than we want to admit. So, NDSU came out with something that was kind of interesting. When I was at Fargo at North Dakota State University in the early 70s, we always talked about the topsoil in the Red River Valley in terms of feet. Very common. We always talked about it in terms of feet. This was kind of interesting because Dr. Frens and not NDSU was sampling some sites and if you look in that bottom paragraph, he makes this comment, while sampling a few miles west of Gardner, North Dakota this spring, he said there was only 10 inches of topsoil left over subsoil that used to be more than two feet thick, because we've got a number of monitoring sites as well. A decade ago along the highway from Grafton to I-29, the topsoil used to be black and now it's brown. Why do these soils change color? Why did it go from black to brown? Would we have more carbon leaving than coming in? Yeah, now we would. Okay, he noted adding while sampling in a couple of fields north and south of Castleton, there's only 10 inches of topsoil left, so we always talked about it in feet. We don't talk about it in feet anymore. That's a concern and I think you know we need to get a handle on that. We need to have more carbon coming in than we do leaving. So expanding season long grazing a little bit. I just want to put a couple things in perspective and if there's if there's planners in here or people that work on grazing systems I want to throw this out to you and I want to tell you why season long grazing is so great. So Josh pay attention. This is why season long grazing is still used so much, is what I'm about to tell you. Number one, the conception rates are generally quite good. Number two, you're going to have a respectable gain in a season long grazing. Number three, labor is minimal. Number four, the difficulty factors. It's not difficult at all. Very simple, very easy, efficient. Four, the social aspect. It's accepted. Socially acceptable. It was our old system for many years. Available water. If you want water in your ponds season long graze, they'll be full of water. So from a water viewpoint, pretty good deal. Type of cattle, very forgiving for the type of cattle. You could have 1600 pound cows in there or you could have 1200 pound cows in there. They're probably both going to do pretty well. This is why season long grazing is so popular. The downside of season long grazing is it's the very, very least amount of biomass production you can make. You just aren't going to get any biomass production out of it. Why? You're always harvesting regrowth. Why did they do so well? They have full selection. They're on a quarter or an 80. They're on a section, whatever. They have full selection. So they're always going to select for the highest protein and energy and all the other grass, they're going to let stand. And then they're going to keep that so vegetative that you won't have any CO2 or sunlight harvest on those plants. And then the root mass will draw up so close to the surface you can actually pick up that sword and pick that plant right out of the soil. Very little production is going to occur. But these items are occurring. Now, as a young conservationist, you're going to talk to that rancher and you're going to tell him that he needs to go into a grazing system. And what we need to be aware of is these items that are on the table because every one of those items has to be dealt with. You're going to now put them into a grazing system and you're going to take away a lot of his selection. So the cow doesn't have that full selection anymore, right? So now he's going to have this even grazing and he's going to be grazing grass that is maybe not as high in protein or energy as what he's accustomed to. If his body condition score drops, what else is going to drop? Conception rates. Exactly. The conception rates will be your first indicator, especially in which group of livestock will it show up first? Is it going to show up in the mature herd first, the second cavers first, or the first cavers first? I think it's the second. The second. Why the second? They have a calf on them. They're still growing, switching out some teeth. All these things are happening and you want them to get pregnant again. That's the group. If you have one question to ask a rancher as to how their operation is doing, my question would be is what's the conception rate on your second cavers? If I get one question to ask, all of these items can be dealt with, but they've all got to be put on the table. If you have livestock that are accustomed to having their head in the trough, that's fine, but that critter is going to be subjected to something a little different now. And we've got to be able to deal with that because we've got to keep the body condition score. If we have the body condition score, we're fine. We can deal with a lot of things. Used to be, I always wanted to take a look at the grass system or the fencing or the water and all those things first. Now I want to look at the livestock and I want a body condition score. The first cavers, I want a body condition score. The second cavers, I want a body condition score. The main herd, I got some idea what I'm dealing with. I want to know their some idea on their average weights because of relative feed intake. You've got a 1600 pound cow and a 1200 pound cow. Which one's going to eat the most? 1600 pound cow. Which one's going to eat the most according to relative feed intake? In relation to its body weight, percent of feed coming in in relation to its body weight, which one's going to eat the most? The small one, the 1200 pound cow. There's your body condition score advantage. I don't care what size livestock a rancher has when I work with him, but he has to know he's up against that because that goes to body condition score. So we can take a look at them. Sixes and sevens are good. Now let's talk a little bit about landscape for the future. So walk through this with me. Pick out a field on your farm and get a mental image of it. Pick out a pasture if you want. Pick out a cover crop field. But pick out a field in your farm as we walk through this. Something to mental image of it. When you look straight down in the field that's in your mind, do you see residue or do you see bare soil? I'm not going to ask you to prove that. This man said he sees residue. I don't know his name but I like him. Okay, if you see bare soil, that's a concern. Definitely that's one of the foundation principles of building soils because you've got to get some cover on the land. So that's the first thing. Look straight down. What do you see? Do you see bare soil? Do you see residue? Second item. Do you have soil disturbance? Have you minimized as much of that disturbance as you can? I work with some organic producers from time to time. They're typically maybe three passes a year or something like that on tillage. I try to get them to two. If I get them to two, I try to get them to one. I try to start to ratchet down that disturbance. You're not going to build soils with soil disturbance. That's a CO2 escalator, right? That's going to enhance the amount of CO2 that goes to the atmosphere. You're going to have more diamonds disappearing. So we want to keep those. So how do we minimize soil disturbance? The second factor. In this new landscape, what do we have for diversity? Do you have all four crop types? If you're on grasslands, you may be due already. If you're on grasslands, you may. If you're on cropland, do we have all four crop types in? Something to think about on each field as you go through this. What do I have? Continual live plant? Do you have a cover crop? I made the comment in, I was in Mankato the other day, and I made the comment that at least in North Dakota, we have this bias toward cover crops. There's a reluctance to use one. The individual I talked to you about that I said had the salinity, the 15% salinity, my continuing the discussion with him, I said we need to put a cover crop in there because salinity management is water management. And I said if we bring a cover crop in there, we can start to balance out the water better. And we can start to work more with transpiration instead of evaporation. And we can do this. And he looked at me and he says, I don't want the cover crop, it takes water. I said okay, let's try this over again. You got too much water. You don't have enough plant. And so we started that whole discussion over again. Okay, so there's a bit of a bias. We got people that are using cover crops, just not enough. Okay, because we can address so many things with them. Livestock integration. You don't have to have livestock, just know somebody who does. We got something wonderful called winter. I think it's the greatest time for grazing on crop land ever invented. Okay, so there's something we can look at. So you go through your particular field and just ask yourself those five questions. It's a lot. It's, it's, think of it too in terms of a systems approach. These aren't meant to stand alone. They're meant as a system. Okay, so let's take a little bit of look at covers. We'll talk about them. I like to talk about them from perennials, annuals, biannuals. So let's take a look at them. How are we doing on time here? We okay yet? So rotational perennials, the Minocan farm where I hang out in the summertime. And if you're interested in the Minocan farm, I got brochures here up front. You're welcome to just grab one. Last summer, we did 31 tour days at the Minocan farm. So 31 separate days, a group from somewheres came. And we would go through soil health principles. We'd go through cover crops and grazing systems and those, and building soils, et cetera. So rotational perennials, there's 10 fields there. I try to have two of them in perennials. I'm going to establish one year. I'm going to graze them four years. Now coming into the third year of grazing on the first one. Okay, so I don't have the taken out part yet, but I do have the putting it in part. I used 21 species. I didn't have to. I could have used something less, right? But if I look at native rangeland in North or South Dakota, I'm going to have a lot of species per acre. Wouldn't be uncommon to have 50 or 75 or more. A lot of species per acre. So I'm trying to mimic that. That's what I want it to look like when I take them out. This is cropland that'll be in this grass for five years. So that's what I want it to look like when I take them out. I want ground cupboard. Gives you a kind of a pretty good look at it. They get about a half acre at a time. They're 12 acre fields. They give them about a half acre roughly. And then the weights. So these are open heifers. And you can see up here they went in on 525. They came out on 630. So that's how long it took us to go through there. They were in there 37 days. They're starting weight was 632. They're ending weight was 734. So I can weigh now. Didn't used to be able to weigh there, but we can weigh now. So our gain was 102 pounds. If you divide that by the 37 days you get 2.75. You can apply your own shrink to this. This doesn't have shrink incorporated into. If you want to use some shrink on it, go ahead. But the gain then was 1734 total pounds. And I really think in any time we bring livestock into the picture we have to look at it on a per acre basis. When you look at it on a per cow basis that's why we have 1600, 1700 pound cows walking around. We need to look at it on a per acre basis. That's the equalizer that puts it in perspective. You can go broke looking at it on a per cow basis. That's not going to happen on a per acre basis. So I think we really always need to still break it down to per acre. So our gain per acre, we had 145 pounds of beef per acre produced on the first go-through. Now, second go-through came back in on 8.18 for 11 days. Now they were 798 pounds after that period of time. And they put on up to 8.35 so they put 37 pounds on during that 11 day period. So they came back in at a heavier weight. We picked up another 52 pounds per acre. So between the two together, 145 pounds plus the 52 pounds getting close to a couple hundred pounds per acre on gain. So this is the front end. The back end of this system will be when it comes out back into crop production. But this particular one will be in two more years. Then it'll come out and go back into a cash crop. So out of the 10 fields, there'll always be two fields rotating through for perennials. That's just perennials. Annials, when we're looking at cover crops, that CO2 is in the atmosphere. We have to have a cover. We have to have a green plant to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere and get it into the plant. Comes in through the stomata. Remember that day in biology class in high school? No, you don't have any recollection of it. They're very honest. Anybody else remember that day in high school in biology where the teacher was talking about something like CO2 coming into a plant and it got kind of hazy? Anyway, that was a really important day. And if you're in agriculture, you're using that all the time. Because we either growing or decomposing all the time. So we got CO2 coming out of the atmosphere into the vegetation. And then the vegetation is going to give it off as exudates into the soil. So also when it matures and dies, it's going to go ahead and as it decomposes, it'll give off carbon, CO2, into the atmosphere as well. So you've got all these things happening. The respiration of the biology, respiration of the residue, all these things are emitting CO2 back into the atmosphere. So when we bring a cover crop in, we are going to, you know, we got these, if this is your growing season, we're using about what? About this much of it? So we got some time in the spring. We got some time in the fall where we're not harvesting any CO2 and sunlight. That's our advantage windows. So if you bring a cover crop in, we can do this in terms of that period of time. We can now harvest additional CO2. If we want more carbon coming into the system than leaving, this is a good way to look at that. I used to think cover crops were important for crop rotation. Now I think they're essential. There's just too many things that they provide to us. And we're starting to learn more and more and more about what they do. This was last year, kind of toward the end of September. We had a cover crop evening tour. And people were getting off the trailer and they were walking around and they got real peaceful in there. Have you ever observed this when people walk out into a cover crop or livestock? There's kind of a calming impact. So just an observation. Okay, this was a wheat field. So this was my wheat field. Now if I'm going to put a cover crop in in North Dakota, Central North Dakota, I got to do some things. One of them is I got to get it in as soon as the canopy comes off. When I take that canopy off and the sun hits that directly onto the residue in the soil below, I have a tendency to dry down rather rapidly. The sooner I get it in, I got more odds on my side. You also want it in right away because you're harvesting sunlight in CO2 and those are your maximum best days or the early days. So I need to get it in right away. This particular wheat came off. We got it off that afternoon, that evening, the next day cover crop went in. Now when you look at it, cover crop, I've never grown a cover crop like I did last fall, but it just came right up above the stubble. And this is what it looked like from the end of the field. Does that look like a wheat field? That was harvested? No. So I got to thinking to myself in my little world, which is dangerous, but I got to thinking to myself and I asked myself this question. I said, why doesn't every wheat field in North Dakota look like this in the fall? That was a question. I don't know. I don't have the answer. Cost too much. Any other thoughts why it doesn't look this way? Never did it that way before. Inconvenient. Doesn't rain. Takes too much moisture. You're not supposed to ask those kind of questions. I don't know if you heard that. He said, why is it always damp or wet in the cover crop field? Why do I get my shoes damp? When I walk through there? Yeah. We have these paradigms in our cropping systems. So I made this comment the other day at Mankato, Minnesota. I said, we have a bias toward cover crops. And there's a guy in the back of the room started to fidget. And I've seen this before, this fidget. Okay. I know what's going to come. It won't be quite a frontal attack, but it'll be close. So he's fidgety in the back and he's waiting for the end of the presentation because he's got a question to ask. So we get to the end and we open it up for questions. The guy pops up and he says, it costs too much. There's no economics. There's no benefits that I can see on it. Before I could answer, a guy on the other side of the room said, I've been using them for three to four years. And he said, I'm not likely to go back. He said, I've seen too many benefits occurring. My soybean yield has increased. And he said, I took the splash out of my soybean production. I don't have the soil splash from the rainfall and bear soils under the leaves. And those were just some of the things he saw, but he saw an improvement in his yield. So it got a little more resilient. There's a whole bunch of other factors that are happening there, but it was more resilient. But there's a bit of a bias toward it. And you all explained it really well. And so how do we overcome that? But I asked myself, why doesn't every wheat field in North Dakota look this way? Every pea field, every lentil field, we got all kinds of windows for them. I try to get them into the cropping system at the Monocan farm. That's just vetch laying on the bottom of corn. Harry Vetch makes some people tighten up really bad, to which I say, use a different legume then. It's the concept. Not hung up on the plant. It's the concept. Sunflower production at the Monocan farm. That's with seven broadleaf covers in it. That's not an insured crop, by the way. But maybe someday will be. Warm season covers. I can take a look at a warm season cover. We've got a number of people that are growing full season covers that I never saw coming. I never saw this coming. And so in our environment across North Dakota, all of a sudden you'll be talking to somebody and he'll say, well I grew a full season cover on one field and I wintered on it. And then I put it back to crop production the following year. Picked out a different one. Never saw that coming. So I grew one warm and one cool season mix each year. Because when these 31 groups, thank you, when these 31 groups come, they want to go walk out in there. They want to take their picture. I've had people lay down in there. They want to close their eyes and listen. Because what do you hear when you're in there? It's alive. It's just alive with the insect world. I clipped it, dried it, clipped it, 9,000 pounds. How much of that material would I want to take off with the livestock? That's the right answer right here. He just says it's so low. About half. Yeah. I think that's a really good place to be. These are the guys that I try to take it off with. They also, the sheep are in there. You just have to take my word for it. I also have done a fair bit of monitoring with nutball and forage analysis on winter grazing. So I got a pretty good idea on a lot of these mixes if we can meet their needs or not. Okay. And we know what their needs are in various stages. So we know that. And this particular one, where's the, oh, let's see if this thing will run. I got a little video clip here just a few seconds if it'll cooperate. My wife and I were on a date night, she thought. And we went out and moved these livestock. She was excited. And we dropped the wire. They get a half acre at a time. But it gives you an idea. We're down on the left side. We're done. It's time to go. And we dropped the wire and they disappeared in there. And you got to, again, take my word for it, but they're in there with the sheep. That's what I wanted to look like on the soil. I want to meet a soil health principle. So I'm looking straight down. And then I said to myself, let's look at a mixture and let's see what's in these individual plants. Top half and bottom half. Because I failed many times trying to convince somebody don't take the bottom half. So I took each plant and I snipped it off one inch above the soil. And then I took each individual plant and I laid it across my hand and I balanced it by weight. And I cut it in half. And then I did a really creative North Dakota thing. I took the top half and I labeled it top half. And I took the bottom half and I labeled it bottom half. And Ruth Beck is thinking based on my title of the program that's pretty crafty that I got that far. But take a look now. If you're going to graze the top half, can you graze the bottom half? Yeah, there's no law against that. Are you going to change the nutrition, the available nutrition for those livestock when you graze the bottom half? Oh, absolutely. Significantly. If you take a look, just take a look at annual ryegrass. Pretty close to drop the protein in half. Some are pretty interesting too from the viewpoint of, let's see. Vetch has got a big drop. Cowpea has got a big drop. You're going to graze that bottom half and then you're going to wonder why the rate of gain wasn't so good. You graze the top half and you're going to be quite pleased. Plus your soil is going to respond. Okay. We won it all, right? And we can do that. But it really kind of illustrates the difference between grazing the top half versus taking it all, okay? Then also I come in and I top some of these cover crops during the summer. And on some of these I'll top them during the summer on half the field and then I won't on the other half and I've done this for a couple of years. And there'll be a difference on the amount of carbon which then equates to the biology. So I'll give you an example. You grow a plant to maturity. It'll produce X amount of carbon. I think we all agree with that, okay? How do you get more carbon out of that plant? If you could do it over again, how do you get more carbon out of the plant? Yeah, you can stress the plant, can't you? So if you came in and you topped it with grazing and you took the livestock off and you let it regrow, you've now extended the period of time that that plant can harvest CO2 in sunlight, okay? So you have these things occurring. The cattle are very difficult to compete against. Typically, I guess I haven't seen it otherwise, but where I graze them, I typically am going to get a little more carbon, okay? It really helps explain why livestock aren't important. Wildlife and livestock, why they're not important for the planet, it explains why they're essential for the planet. Yeah, we're not in the Q&A period, sir. I really can't, just go ahead. If you hate that. The problem with the haying is how do livestock graze? He's going to go ahead and kind of wrap his tongue around that plant and pull it, right? They're a tug, okay? You're going to cut it, okay? And probably cut it lower. Yep, lower than you should. And you probably don't have any biology on that cutter. So the cow is going to have the biology in its mouth that's going to be on that plant and the saliva and all these things that are going to occur. So if we can graze it because the cattle are so good at processing recycling, the vast majority of it, as it goes through them, is going to stay in the field. So they are just tailor-made for building soils. Oh, if you did hay it, of course, if you left a little bit more, that would be advantageous. But the big issue is you're going to export it off, right? Yeah, but if you did. Yep, yep, exactly. Okay, I think we're getting close to probably a good place to maybe stop. What do we got left? Five minutes or two minutes? We got time for a couple questions. Okay, we got a couple questions. There were a couple minutes left. So we can just talk about whatever. I don't think it's going to pay to go much further. So we'll just visit a bit. Yes, sir? Yeah, I haven't done that to speak of. I have rolled cover crops before where I rolled them onto the soil surface, rolled half and grazed half. And then where I grazed, I still had more response than where I rolled it. But I think, just think in terms of the five principles, when you're done, do you still see ground cover? You have diversity, you still just walk through them. But I haven't specifically done it in the manner that you just described. Yeah, well it's kind of the viewpoint if you went in there and you shredded it, say with a bat wing mower or something, is it going to decompose quicker? Very likely you've got more edge effect. The bottom line on decomposition is what's your saprophytic fungi? Do you have sap… That's the principle decomposer. And when we started into these systems, our soils were rather biologically inactive, or you could say dead. And as we went along down the road, they started to improve. And one of the first things we noticed on that is we decompose so much quicker. And but you got to have saprophytic fungi to knock down the high carbon and then the biology comes, or the bacteria comes in and cleans up after the fungi get it knocked down to a simpler chain and all of a sudden this processing becomes very quick. But initially it starts out slow. Yes, I, you know, initially, well we, when we put cattle on covers on cropland, we usually have a backup plan. You know, where are we going to take them if we've got really wet and soft and that type of thing. And initially, I think we paid more attention to that than we probably do now, because once our soils improved, they had so much more load bearing capacity. It wasn't near the issue. Initially they just collapsed so easily. But they got more resilient as we went down the road. But we always had kind of a backup plan. You know, if we're going to bring them into a cover and we get two, three day rain, you have a native pasture, you have a grass base or something that you can bring them on to help offset that. But man, as the soils improved, they just got way more resilient. So I don't see too much of that going on anymore. But initially it was more of an issue. Anytime of year. I think we're kind of to the end here folks, really appreciate being able to come, you know, from anytime you're in North Dakota and you get to go south. You know, it's a great thing. Appreciate being able to visit with you today. And I'm going to be here the rest of the day. Be happy to visit with you on anything during the day. And again, if you wanted to grab a Manokin farm brochure, they're up here on the table. You'd be very welcome to them. Thank you very much.