 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 Lemmon and Fort Peer. Well, it's a real honor and pleasure to be able to be with you today and talk a little bit about soil health and a lot of other topics. I will tell you, I'll be right up front and say that the folks that have spoke before me and the folks that are going to speak after me know way more about this topic than I do. But I would say there's probably not a whole lot of people in this room that are more passionate about this topic than I am. And it's really because it is what, it is really the most important thing that I think that we can be doing for ourselves and for South Dakota. And that's when I talk about soil health. And I'm going to go off on a couple different tangents today with you, but it's all going to kind of wrap back around. You know, when you think of NRCS and who we are and that we came out of the 1930s, the dust bowl and what was going on in the country and how we were trying to solve erosion problems, it was primarily erosion. It was primarily soil and erosion is what we were about. And then when you start to think that many of us, or at least me, went to college a long time ago. And when I was in college, and I took a lot of soils classes, really what I was taught is that the soil was made up of sand, silt, and clay. I learned to texture it well. I learned that there was water. I learned that there was oxygen. But all of this biological part of it, that life, it wasn't even talked about when I went to school. So to sit here today and to hear producers and labs and researchers all talking about the biological life of soil and what it can do for all of us, man, it really is exciting. And it's neat. Jay, your comments about thinking back about Lawrence Welk. You know, I think the point at least you made for me, not sure it was what you were wanting to make, was is that it's, I really hope that all of us think back to what's going on right now. The revolution of what's happening with soils and soil health and conservation. So know that it's an interesting and exciting time. And I want you to know that NRCS, we are excited to be a part of that and be with you at the table. Whether it's your kitchen table talking about what's going on in your individual farmer ranch or at a table here in Fort Peer talking about the same topic as well. So what I want to do today is just hit on a few key things and kind of tie together a few comments, make a few points. And then I'm going to let you get to lunch. I want to talk a little bit about a 2015 inventory that we completed related to cropping systems. Tell you a little bit about that. And then I want to talk about why we should care and kind of wrap those two together. So first of all, let's have a discussion. If you want to interrupt me and ask me a question, go for it, okay? But I'm going to keep us moving the best I can. Because the key, the reason I like that is because we're all going to learn the best from each other going back and forth with one another. And I really encourage you to do that this afternoon when you get the panel of experts up here, the producers. Soil health in South Dakota. Really, I feel like this. I put a lot of pressure on myself or on the agency that I represent. But if soil health is so blessed important to us all, you should be able to look at the natural resources conservation service. You should be able to ask us. You should be able to say it is Jeff Zimbridge. Zimbridge, where are we in South Dakota? What's the health of our soils? And right now that's a challenge that I really cannot meet very well. And it frustrates me. And I'm looking forward to the day we can get there. What I can tell you a little bit is where we're making some progress on things that I would say are indicators of where soil health is going. And I want to talk about a few of those. But I do truly look forward to the day when we have a very easy way to evaluate soil health on every farm and ranch across South Dakota. And we could give you a health score for our state. Because I always think it's way better to know where you are to help you decide where you want to go in the future, okay? So one of the ways we do that is we know that we're pretty much not going to be able to improve soil health very well if we can continue to till it in the most aggressive ways possible. We pretty much need to eliminate as much disturbance as we can. We may not in a row crop situation be able to eliminate all disturbance, but the more we can minimize it. So one thing that we started to do is we started to, once again, do an inventory of our cropping systems across our state. It had been done in 2004, then it was stopped. And when I came to the state, I thought, man, we got to know where we're at. I got to know how have we improved since 2004, and we're now going to continue this well into the future. So we did this again in 2005, and I want to talk to you a little bit about those trends. What we've seen from 2004 to 15 is the percent of no-till, the acres of no-till in South Dakota are going up. That's good news, okay? That's telling me that we are moving toward improved soil health in our state. Now it's not a perfect scenario across all counties, and I'll share that in a little bit. But I just would let you know that you can see that that dark green piece of the pie, that's no-till, and it's moved from 37% to 46% in roughly an 11-year period. We're losing the acres out of the other tillage types. And that's okay with me, okay? That's a normal progression, and that's kind of how it should work. There you can see it on the graph, roughly looking from 1985 when the Food Security Act was passed, and we were asked to write highly erodible plans and other things with producers. You can see the change that's happened with no-till. So once again, it'll be neat to think back to see if we are a part of that revolution and what's all going on. It varies across the state. The darkest green counties will represent where 75% or more of the cropland is no-tilled. And the lighter counties go out from there. Yellow would be that zero to 25%, so you can see some trends. But what you can also see is in 2004, we only had four of those dark colored counties. That's 75% or more no-till. And now in 2015, there were 17 counties that are in that category, so it's growing. You can also use that map to tell you that there's different situations going on in different parts of our state. There's different challenges for producers that we've got to solve. And we have to work together to figure those out. The other cool part of what we accomplish, I feel like, with the release of our cropping systems inventory, and by the way, while your folks are having lunch, we're gonna get around to your tables and hand out a copy of this brochure. It's about an eight-page brochure. If you don't have one, please pick one up and we'll pick up the extras. But another key part of this is it's allowed us another mechanism to share the voices of the producers that are really making this work on their operations. They represent all of South Dakota. They're scattered all across our state. We call them our South Dakota Voices for Soil Health. We've got over 80 people signed up in this category. If there's more of you in this room that wanna be a part of it, please join up today. Let your local district conservationists know. Because what we know at NRCS, what I know is, you're gonna learn way more from other producers than you're gonna learn from me. And I want you to be able to interact with producers that are making it work. Will they tell you they have all the answers? No. Will they feel comfortable standing up in front of a room and saying, whatever I do on my place will work perfectly on yours? No. But these are folks that are willing to share their experiences and we should all take advantage of them. Four represented here, the display up in front here represents a whole group of them. And all of those profiles or stories you see stacked up there, come and get those. There's copies of all of our profiles we've gotten completed so far available for you to take home, learn from producers, and be able to take some of their ideas and put to use on your operation. So what we know, I just covered a little bit about the no-till side or the tillage side, that whole system. But we know that cropping systems really are a lot more than that, okay? It's not just about reducing the amount of disturbance, but it's also about that rotation. We've heard that already today, having that diversified cover crops. It's another way to really kick start that and have more diversity entered into your cropping system. And then finally, now there's this whole talk about integrating livestock back on cropland. Things that in the time when I was being taught and I was promoting no-till farming and things like that. We were actually telling producers, well you might have to not graze your stocks cuz you might cause compaction. So the whole science and the whole thought process that's been going on is changing now and that's neat to see. That diversity, I would love to be able to measure that in a better way. But we're starting to look at that in our CS. I'd like to be able to come up with a scorecard for our state and our counties that way. What we put together here is we roughly looked at different types of plants or crops. We have cool season broadleaves. We have cool season grasses. Those are the more yellow. We have warm season broadleaves, that'd be soybeans and sunflowers. And we have our warm season grasses. Corn would be a great example. They're the green and the, I take that back. The warm season grasses are brown and the warm season broadleaves are the dark green. So as you just look across the state, just look for a pie where you see kind of equal portions of some of those different kinds of crops that are being grown. That'd be one way to look at diversity. But I would encourage you to look at that also from your operation. You can also see that those same counties where no till percentages were high are our same counties where we have high diversity as well. So there's a connection there, okay? Maybe it's because of moisture relations. Maybe it's because it fits in well better with the operation. I don't know all the connections but I definitely know that there is one and this points that out for me. Kind of the point I just made about those 17 counties. This whole thing of diversity is really starting to get a lot of talk. Every time I go to a meeting, I hear people talk about diversity. Jay mentioned it this morning. It was mentioned also just now by Lance. So this is really catching on and you're seeing it in the news as well about studies that are shown. We've lost a lot of diversity in our crop. And the point was roughly made earlier today is, do we want to put all our eggs in one basket? Do we want to put all of our eggs in just two baskets? Or do we want to spread that risk out? And I think a lot of us see value in spreading that risk out and we're definitely seeing value for the soils and the health of those soils by having that diversity in the landscape. So I hope it's not a lost art. I hope it's something that we can bring back. I hope it's something we can incentivize and we can see the value and we'll work together to make it happen more. Cover crops can be a part of that, right? We have producers that are primarily in areas with corn bean rotations but they are starting to integrate some diversity back in with either full season or part season cover crops. We're seeing it happen after crops are harvested. We're starting to see cover crops being planted into corn and soybeans while the crop is growing. So there's a whole new area and expertise that's kind of evolving in this area. Watch for it to unfold more. What we really know is cover crops along with all that diversity, they help us build soils. I mean, you can see many kinds of different soil. We'll talk a little bit more about that today, but it really has a chance. And the soils across our state are the diversity is incredible and immense. I mean, just when you look at that kind of general relief map of South Dakota, just think about all the different soils, roughly 650 that we've kind of identified different soils across our state. They're all going to react different, they're all going to be needed to be treated different, you know that in your operation. So they're all going to happen, but what we do now, again, is that if we put some cover crops on those landscapes, we can take some soils that maybe don't look so healthy and we can really make them be soil that we would call a lot healthier. And the healthier, you know, just from my description, I guess. When you look at it and you see structure and you see a dark color, and it looks like a dark cottage cheese or a dark chocolate cake, there you're really holding onto something that is alive and is going to be a value to you. Then this whole livestock thing. Put up a picture just real quick of the Jorgensen family, Governor Dewgard in the picture and some other dignitaries. But the key thing of it is this family was recognized this past year as our South Dakota Leopold Award winners. But the really neat part of this and why I put this slide in here is here's an operation that is totally integrating livestock back into their operation. They built incredible miles of fence in their operation to try to do that, to try to make things better. They're seeing changes in their soils and their landscape. They believe it's doing good things for them. So once again, their profile's up here in front of the room, grab onto it and see what you can learn from the Jorgensons. So let me move on to that kind of the other half of the talk. Why should we care? Anybody in the room want to tell me why they think we should care about soil health? I got a few little prizes up here today, if you want to call them that. I brought along a rainfall infiltration kit that's really simple. I'll show you a little picture of it in use in a little bit. But I got five of these and I want to give them away to producers that will go home and put this to work in their operation. So anybody want to talk about maybe why we should care about soil health? Yes? We should be farmer for the future. We've got to be things of self. We should be farmer for ourselves. We've got to be farmer for the future. Great, thank you. You get one. You can give it to somebody else if you want, but it's yours. Nathan's got four more over here. So as people throw me some other ideas, let's go ahead and hand them out. And I'll talk about the only requirement when you get one of those, what it is. It's not scary. Okay, why should we care? That's a really big picture one. I'm even thinking of simpler stuff. Right back here. Excellent, excellent example. The answer was for consumers down the line, they're going to want to know that we're raising our food in a sustainable fashion. You're dead on. I mean, it is already influencing the marketplace. There are large companies and organizations that are purchasing food that is grown sustainably by their definition. We'll all define it different, but that's huge, okay? So that's a good one. Kit goes there, Nathan. Who else? Yes. Water quality, you bet. No doubt about it. It's going to improve it a lot of ways. So we got a kit right here, Nathan, orange hat. Yep, you bet. Get one to Rick. Anybody else? Your folks, go ahead, Levi. I can't disagree with that. Okay, Levi gets the last one. Now here's the deal, folks that got the kits. I only ask one thing. I want you to call up your local NRCS office and make them come out to the field with you and use that across your farmer ranch, okay? See what you can learn from it. It is a tool. We just hope it's educational. I'm going to show you a few pictures in just a second. Let me tell you though, you guys gave great answers. You guys gave great answers that were way more in depth than mine. Mine are going to be simple. Mine are kind of like no-brainers, but they're the things that go through my mind, but they're going to lead to all those things that you've got. It's about increasing organic matter. We've heard that already this morning, which is going to lead us to rainfall infiltration and runoff, which can lead us to productivity, which can lead us to efficiency in our operations, which can bring us resilience. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. And there's many, many more. And I think your guys' answers, like I said, were much more in depth than that and really thinking further out, so great. Let's take these a little bit. I am convinced that if you implement soil health practices, organic matter will go up. Anybody in this room that currently is trying to shoot for or manage for less organic matter? I've never heard a producer say, I'm managing my farm to reduce my organic matter level. Now, while nobody raised their hand and said that they're managing for that, I can tell you there are certain practices we're doing a lot of in our state that are doing that, that are lowering organic matter. So just evaluate what you're doing and think about how you can change it. This is a no-brainer one, though, really. It gives us increased water-holding capacity. We say, commonly, every percent of organic matter in that one-foot topsoil is going to hold another 16,000-plus gallons of water. That's got yield potential to it. That has yield potential. Just think of the value in P and N. And it was great to follow Lance because, really, a lot of the talks kind of lead to that. Along with that water-holding capacity, there's the potential to have nutrients that are available as we increase organic matter. So there's value to it. So just think of it as dollar signs going up as that percent organic matter goes up. Let's talk about it on the water side. Let's look at it fence-lined by fence on two sides of a fence. This is Brookings, South Dakota, a couple of years ago, two fields right across the fence. We didn't put two pictures together from two different parts of the state. One side has been managed with a different tillage system. You can definitely see, literally, no till. They're not doing tillage in their cropping system. Got some rotation differences. Right now, all you see is soybeans. And the other side is soybeans. But you can definitely tell it's been tilled. Look at what's happening with the moisture. After several days of heavy rain, followed by another heavy rain right before the picture was snapped. If you were driving around making decisions of what land you wanted to rent, what land you wanted to bring into your operation, which one would you go after? Here's that soil health test kit. Little infiltration ring pounded in the ground. Put a little cellophane over it. Pour in roughly an inch of moisture. Measure how fast it goes in the ground. Soils, right side by side. One's been no tilled. 14 years, corn, bean, wheat, rotation with cover crops. That inch goes in in 45 seconds on this innit soil. Conventionally tilled, right next door. Corn and bean, spring disk. Took 18 minutes to get it in. Again, which one would you want to rent? Which one would you want to have ready when a rain comes in the spring? Which one do you think is going to do you well in July, when you really wish that you were hoping for a rain? And I think that brings us to resilience. I really, resilience is kind of a big word for me. It's kind of like that new movie out. I can't even say it well. Revenant? Revenant? After my wife and I went to the movie the other night, a little gory for her, but after we went to the movie, it's like she said to me, what's Revenant meant? I still haven't looked it up yet. I have to do that. Resilience is that way, though. But the way I define resilience in a way that I can kind of understand it is, if I'm healthy, I'll probably be able to bounce back from things. It doesn't mean I'm not going to get sick, right? If I'm a healthy guy, I'm still going to get a cold. I'm still going to get the flu. I still may come down with cancer, but I think I'll be able to recover better. I might be able to fight it off more. I might be able to bounce back. That's really, I think, what we're talking about with our soils, is we're trying to make them resilient. We're trying to make them be able to bounce back. Leopold put a quote in, I like it a lot. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. That's kind of what I just said. And then conservation is our ability to really understand it and figure it out and how to make it happen. We had droughts a few years ago. This was 2012, looking at the drought monitor. I believe healthy soils are going to help us deal with these kind of situations, and we're hearing that. When they just grabbed some data from across the corn belt from drought states in 2012, did a lot of sampling, they just quickly looked at fields that it had cover crops involved in their rotations and those that didn't. Look at the yield difference, bushels per acre from soils or from fields that had cover crops incorporated in those don't. Again, that 11 bushels could mean a lot in how that field turned out profitability-wise for you. And I know many of you in this room also have not only on the crop landside, but you have grazing in your operations as well. And we've talking now about getting grazing lands back in our crop land soils, and I love that. The key of it is, is the theory, the ideas are found there just as well. There were times at NRCS. I think that I was told, hey, as long as the land is in grass, it's taken care of. We've got good conservation on it, okay? It was thought of many times as the ultimate land use. But what we know now is not all grazing land and not all management practices on grazing lands are created equal. So there are things that we can do better, right? When we think of those four principles again about eliminating disturbance, diversity, cover crops, and then that last one about livestock, we've kind of got the first two nailed pretty easy in a grazing system. We pretty much eliminate disturbance. We pretty much have livestock integrated on grazing lands, but that diversity thing is something that we need to learn a lot about in our grazing systems. And we're gonna get that by managing it, okay? So the bottom line of is, the more we can manage our grasslands, the more we can improve the diversity of our stands, the more we can make sure that they're deep-rooted, the more that it's gonna improve the health of that soil. Again, we're doing some more fence-line strategies on that. Here's a barn soil. One side is invaded. It's got a lot of cool season, probably brone bluegrass. Probably got that way because of how it was being managed. The other side across the fence, good native site, managed wells, getting rest periods, it's getting rotated, those kinds of things. Look at the soil profiles on the side. I don't know if you can see it, but we got way more darkness on the native side and it moves down deeper in the soil. How does it handle water? Go out with that infiltration ring again, punch it in the ground. On the native site, the first inch went in in 1.2 minutes. The second inch went in in 27 minutes. On the invaded site, it took 21 minutes for the first inch and it took 109 hour and a half or more for the second inch. So again, if you're renting rangeland, which one would you wanna have? Which one would you pay for? Which one would you want to have in your operation? And I always get a kick out of looking back at history. Sometimes I think, wow, we just figured this stuff out. We just got this learned. Here's a story, or a picture. This is from South Dakota. It's just north, they're here not too far. Fence line contrast. I'll read it to you for those that can't see it. Don't lose your reins, R-E-N, R-E-I-N-S, and then also reins as we think of it as precept. Proper grazing use means more grass, more beef, less sediment, pollution. Same slope, soil, rainfall, and taxes. Overgrazing never pays. This rain 1.81 inches is what they have written on the board and then they've got their moisture depth on the two sides. Six inches on one side, 17 inches on this side. Simple little experiment. But again, if I've got that 1.8 inches of moisture, I would like to have a soil, a field, a pasture that took that in right away. So you must think that after all this time, we've been studying this now, although so much of this is new, we must have all the answers. And that's where I'm gonna tell you we don't. When you look at this healthy soil, we still have so much to learn about it. Everything is evolving quickly. We just have a lot to do to be able to figure out how to unlock all those secrets that's going on in the soil. The key of it is, though, NRCS stands ready to do it with you in a partnership, not only with our partners at South Dakota State and with Ruth and the No Till Association and all the great work she's done to bring us all together, but with you individually as producers out on your landscape. So I encourage you to get into your local offices, ask them about some of these things in soil health, and challenge us to do better to help you improve the soils on your landscape. Because what I do know, and I believe very much, and I'm extremely passionate about, is it will be good for South Dakota. It will be doing the right things for our state. It will be doing what's right for the next generation, which is sitting over here, has been such a good little baby today. Definitely the right thing to do. So with that, I'll end with a saying that came from our founding father. If you wanna call him that, our first chief of NRCS, take care of the land and the land will take care of you. I think if we think about that a lot and put that to use, it'll be good for all of us, and we'd love to do that and work with you to further that down the road. Thanks much.