 A wise man once said, all great change in America begins at the dinner table. Think about it. When the American farmer sets the table, he puts out plates to feed himself and about one hundred of his closest friends and neighbors three times a day. It didn't come easy, it took strong men and women willing to change, to become the most bountiful nation in the world. It started with a draft horse and a plow that covered four to five acres in a day has turned to tractors covering 18 acres an hour. We sure have come a long way, but we can't stop growing and changing. That dinner table is getting larger. The world's population is expected to grow from 7 to 9 billion people by 2050. Over the next 40 years, farmers will have to produce as much food and fiber as they did in the last 500 years. More mouths to keep up, more mouths to feed, rising cost, challenging weather, and a shrinking land base. How do we meet the needs of tomorrow, maintain our precious soil and water resources, and grow our bottom line all at the same time? Sustainability and profitability. It's a complex balancing act, but by achieving one, we also expect the other, how, doing more the same hasn't worked. Get up earlier, work the ground more, leave less residue, rebuild the terraces, and watch water or wind you rode the soil you depend on. Financial stability and sustainability can only come with change. We can't look for better yields, healthier soils, fewer man-hours, less erosion, and more profit without change. Change is what we have to do. Take an uncomfortable step, take a step down a new road, change. Each grower may start at a different point and travel at a different speed, but there are 10 common signposts to sustainable soil health and prosperity along the way. If we are willing to honestly look at what we are doing now, consider alternatives, ask questions, adopt and implement solutions, and stick to it through the rough ride, we'll make it. It starts with number one, recognizing the problem. Land, it is the most precious resource a farmer has. How many times have you heard someone say they're not making any more of it? But healthy soils are under attack from erosion. Sometimes it's wind, and sometimes it's water. The 50s were kind of tough down in our area, and there was a lot of dry weather and a lot of dust storms and that sort of thing. At that time, virtually everyone in the community used moldboard plows, primarily wheat country. The scenario was the plow would be the first thing that you would till the ground with and then a spring tooth or light cultivation of some time, and maybe three, four or five times of that during the summer. So by the time, seeding time came around, everything was pretty powdery and vulnerable to both wind and water erosion at that point. We farm in an area that's a real high clay soil, it's a red clay soil. Not particularly vulnerable to wind erosion, but very vulnerable to water erosion. And also, if you worked that ground a little too wet, it pulls up tremendously big clods and chunks that we spent the rest of the summer working back down to something we could make for a seed bed. Over the years, wind and water erosion have taken their toll on soil health, and traditional farming practices deepen the negative effects. I remember Dad telling me that, well, you know, I've always thought that you usually get paid for your tillage one layer or the other. What was true in his generation may not be true in my generation at all. What was good for our grandfathers may not be good for us. Now we know that tillage disturbs the soil structure and makes it more vulnerable to erosion. It also reduces crop residues that protect the soil from wind and water erosion and holds moisture. Each time the ground is worked, valuable moisture is released into the air. Tillage requires more fuel, more labor, and more equipment hours. As I watched my dad and talked to him, I felt like it would sure be nice if you didn't have to come out here and turn that soil upside down, working that soil back down to make a seed bed. We were very conventional. My grandparents terraced and I farmed the way that the manual indicated it would be the proper way. I really couldn't make up the decision to go completely no-till, but at one of the meetings where they had the rainfall simulator, and when he flipped over the tray with the plowed ground and it was completely dry, I just instantly made up my mind that that was the proper way to, we should be farming some of this ground. I remember having to plow the ditches in before we could plow across them. In my understanding of what needed to be done in those built terraces and contour farm, I was looking for ways to better that situation. The big realization when you go into the banker and you can't pay your notes, then you know from an economic standpoint that's not working. There must be a better way. As we begin to realize the need for change, it's time to start asking questions of other farmers, crop specialists, suppliers, and exploring our own willingness to try new tools to get answers growers can attend meetings on tillage, cover crops and residues, develop a pool of knowledge for new tools and technologies that reduce tillage, and seek out support for open-minded solutions, which leads us to number two, asking questions. Now that I've had children from some of the questions they asked me on questions I asked some of my neighbors, different equipment they bought, different things they did, directions they worked the ground. So I wasn't asking questions of others in my area. There weren't people to ask questions of, because it was and still remains predominantly tillage applications, but it did get some exposure through going to no-till-on-the-plains and the summer tour to South Dakota. That's where I started to ask questions. It wasn't so much why are you doing what you were doing, but why can't you do it this way, and it was more looking for the next step, the next better way. The mindset was that there should always be a better way, and that it's our job to kind of look for that. Even when we start to get answers, change is hard. With information, the need to change becomes clear. Number three, formulating the answer. Having once said, a pessimist complains about the wind. An optimist expects it to change. A realist adjusts his sales. As we come to the answers, we make adjustments based on an understanding of the problem. Probably the most important thing that I have been made aware of is the idea that I don't know everything. So the idea that we can always improve is something that was necessary for me to be able to learn is it's pretty hard to teach someone that already knows the answers. Because each grower will start in a different place and go at a different speed, he will also stop at different solutions along the way. We need to formulate our own answers based on location, soil type, and needs. We adjust farming practices based on answers to the questions. How can I reduce tillage to improve my soil health? How can I increase my crop residue and new crop protection? What is the best crop rotation for my soil and location? Should I plant a cover or companion crop? Your answers will be unique to your needs and your direction should be selected and supported by information, experts, and experienced growers. The underlying goals remain, sustainability and profitability, which leads us to number four, accepting the truth. The truth is change is difficult. It takes what we know and makes it different. It's hard, it takes time, but to continue to do the wrong thing efficiently is not the answer. It certainly wasn't an overnight thing and when you have things drilled into you for all your childhood, this is the way you do it and this is the way you are successful. Just to move planting date by a couple of weeks on wheat, for example, took me several years, probably close to a decade, to really get comfortable with the idea. I didn't just go no-till overnight, I tried and worked that direction and would have some failures and would fall off the wagon and get the tillage tools out and always felt kind of stupid once I finished tilling a field that hadn't been tilled for a couple of three years and felt like I had thrown away some effort. We had a lot of failures with no-till and it took us a while to realize why the failures occurred. Good share of those were caused by inadequacy of planting equipment, being able to deal with the higher residues. We have to be able to plant through about anything in terms of residues and it took the industry a while to develop machines that would function in those levels of residue. It didn't happen overnight. Change takes us from a passive to an active role. It can be exciting and renew our love of the land, engage us, and lead to significant benefits. Sustainable practices lead to healthy soil that decreases soil erosion. This organic content promotes growth of earthworms and microbes and helps retain moisture. Those who adopt the right new tools and techniques, ones that preserve productivity and make economic sense, will survive and pass productive land to the next generation. I think the first year or two, sure. There was more than one time I wondered, boy, do I know what I'm doing? Is this the right place to be or the right way to go? After about four or five years, that question never comes to mind again. When we finally accept the truth, we realize we are part of a larger group of like-minded growers, which brings us to number five, connecting with others. There are a lot of resources out there. It was almost from the very start, there were a couple, three of us that would call each other, you know, what rate of the chemical are you using, what planting, how many seeds break, are you dropping, and the group of people who share information got larger and larger and larger as time went on, as more and more people started to adopt the practice. I've heard it said you can't be an expert unless you're 50 miles from home, and around our area there aren't too many people really doing what we are doing 15 years ago when we started. I think it's very important that we as producers share, it's certainly been important to me that there were people ahead of me that were willing to share their experiences. Well, there weren't too many books written on it, there were articles, and it was a lot speedier in field trips, you could go see results. Those meetings, looking back, it was like a little college education on the fly. Most growers are willing to share successes and failures. Number six, adopt the main principles. First, avoid excessive tillage. Reducing tillage minimizes the loss of organic matter and protects the soil surface with plant residue. Tillage can break up soil structure, speed the decomposition and loss of organic matter, increase the threat of erosion, destroy the habitat of helpful organisms, and cause compaction. The biggest thing we've done for soil health is eliminate tillage. When we first went in a no-till, I think you could have taken a shovel out in our fields and dug all afternoon and not found an earthworm. You just didn't see them. And it was about at the fourth year you started seeing a few and then on through the fifth, sixth, seventh, and we're in about the tenth, eleventh year now. When we're back checking seed placement when we're planting in the spring, the earthworms are quite frequently up, fairly high, moisture conditions are good. We'll be cutting earthworms into with the discs that place the seed. The other thing we've noticed is that it takes a really serious rainstorm to pond water on our fields now, whereas back in the tillage days it would seal over and you'd have little puddles of water behind the terraces quite frequently. Now you just don't see that very often at all. The second principle is keep the ground covered. Bear soil is susceptible to wind and water erosion and to drying and crusting. Ground cover protects the soil, provides habitats for larger organisms such as insects and earthworms, and can improve water availability. We have found out on our red clay soils that no till without residue is not a very workable situation. You just almost have to have some ground cover. Third, diversifying cropping systems. Diversity is beneficial for several reasons. Each plant contributes a unique root structure and type of residue to the soil. A diversity of soil organisms can help control pest populations, and a diversity of cultural practices can reduce weed and disease pressures. In the process of better understanding what I was doing, I have taken advantage of using diversity and intensity to establish my rotation. The biggest thing that we started doing is starting to do crop rotations and planting a double crop behind wheat. Then we had another plant of a different species using water at different times. Once we got into a rotation where we could use broadleafs and grasses at various times of the year, keep something growing there as 365 if you want. That's the ultimate goal. Principle number four is maintain living roots. Maintaining a growing crop with living roots provides additional organized matter as well as cover and food for soil organisms. So the living roots we try to sequence our growing crops as tightly as we can, and indeed if things work well, if it rains, we will have only one and two week periods between the harvest of one crop and the planting of the next. That's the planters in the field when the combine is. The principles to develop healthy sustainable soil don't change. Reduce tillage, keep ground covered, diversify cropping systems, maintain living roots. How we implement them is up to us. Implementing the ideas is number seven. Implementing the principles for healthy soils is not a minor tweak in farming practices. It's a major one. The ground cover and the soil cover has been probably the key to making no-till work for us. Several times we planted feed and just let it grow up six, seven feet tall and fall down and all the neighbors have asked, what are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with that? And then the next spring when we got ready to plant mylar or something, there was just moisture right there, so that was really noticeable. We saw thatch's start to develop and I was actually starting to get concerned about we're not going to be able to plant through this stuff. And then as the soil more or less came alive and we started to have more organisms that were living off of that thatch, now I still have trouble growing enough residue to keep things covered. It just amazes me how fast the residue goes away now and we do no-tillage whatsoever. In the beginning I didn't realize the value, but after I've witnessed the incredible support that each of the different crops in the cover crop provide each other, it's a night and day. I think once we understood what we needed to do and we made it from mind that