 Let's continue with Dr. Randy Anderson as he unpecks his spiral of soil regeneration. To give you an example here of like say soil health, because we were having more crop growth and more residue and more diversity, we number one increased the amount of organic matter in the soil and then that led us into a soil health benefit. Because we had we were growing crops more frequently minimizing the use of follow and because we had residue protection on the soil surface, we now don't increase our organic matter, but we also increase the microbial activity. Benefit of both of those is that they are cycling more carbon through and they rebuild soil aggregates and so therefore the infiltration of the soil, the porosity of the soil increase because we had healthier soils. A second benefit that came from that here is this nutrient cycling. Because we increase the microbial community, we were increasing the amount of organic pools of various nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. That is more accessible by crop plants and so the no-tillers I've reduced their nitrogen and our phosphorus inputs they're getting more yields and yet they're putting on less fertilizers. An example might be like with nitrogen they've reduced the amount 25 to 35 percent. Phosphorus some producers have reduced it 50 percent in certain soil types. They've eliminated the use of phosphorus fertilizer altogether and the point is they're getting healthier plants. There was a research study using lysimeters that showed that when you increase the microbial community you get the nutrients into the plants earlier. Therefore the seedlings are healthier. Another point is because we had crop diversities we were having a better impact on reducing plant diseases. One of the diseases problems that we have is root diseases and that's very hard to identify and recognize. Well how we've figured that out is we found that the less frequently you grow the crop the more it the yield is. To give you an example in the Great Plains, winter wheat if you grow it once every two years and compare it to once every four years using all the same factors you get about 15 to 20 percent more yield if it's once every four years. So therefore you have less plant diseases. Another benefit is weed management. Now initially we expected to get a benefit with crop diversity because when you grow a sequence of crops with different life cycles that gives you more opportunities to control weeds. We've noticed the second benefit that was completely surprising to us. Crops after seeing all these changes are more tolerant of weeds. To give you an example there was a study in Pennsylvania where they had two treatments in post for 25 years using cover crops versus tillage. The soil, the one with the cover crops was much healthier soil had all of these benefits here. When they compared the impact of weeds on corn grown into healthy soil versus the conventional soil, they found that corn was five times more tolerant of weeds when you had the same amount of infestation. In other words you're getting nutrient cycling so you had in healthier plants. The seedlings were healthier. They got off to a better start and then when the weeds came in the crop could tolerate them that much more. This will also help us in addressing the impact of too much herbicides. Now I have this this sustainability up here. I know that's defined in several ways, but to give you one example I see this as a two-part definition. Number one you want to improve the resoil resources you have when you quit farming and number two you want to make a profit. Well, there was a long-term economic assessment of producers in the Great Plains who were using all of these tactics and compared them to conventional producers still doing tillage. They found that their net return was three to five times higher. But a surprising point was that their soil protection, their organic matter had been more than doubled. They were increasing their agricultural stability. They're reducing their fertilizer inputs, reducing the herbicide inputs. Therefore, they were just simply getting more profit. So let's get this straight. The research shows that going down the no-till road gives the farmer all of these benefits. Right, and remember it starts with no-till, but there's also more crop diversity in this picture. Bottom line is it's less inputs for the farmer. Stay with us as Dr. Anderson gives us a first-hand example of some of these benefits in our next video. See you soon!