Episode 132: Diverse Cover Crop Systems with Keith Berns

Hi friends. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. I'm here today with a guest who I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for, Keith Burns from Green Cover Seed. Keith, when I look at the landscape of the people who have facilitated adoption of regenerative agriculture and who have freely shared their knowledge, there are many people who have done and continue to do amazing work. But there aren't many who've had the level of impact and have helped as many people as you have. I've really respected the events that you've hosted and the way that you shared, freely shared your information. What was it that originally inspired you to go down this pathway? What has your journey looked like?

Well, thank you, John. Thank you for those kind words. It's a pleasure to be on the podcast and I've always considered you a great friend and a great leader in the movement as well. So my brother and I have been farming here in South Central Nebraska really all our life. We grew up on the farm there. I did teach school for 10 years. I taught agriculture and computers for 10 years after I graduated from college. My brother Brian came back to the farm when he graduated from college. And so I taught for 10 years. I've got a education background, you know, have seen the importance of, you know, teaching people early on how to do things for themselves. And so I moved back to the farm in 1998 and we pretty much adopted full blown no Till at that time. And we were very involved in no Till organizations. Brian was on the board of no Till on the Plains. I was doing their website and doing a lot of their technical work. So we were both very involved in no Till on the Plains. And then in 2006, a man named Adamir Caligari from Brazil was invited to no Till on the Plains. And he came and was one of the keynote speakers. And he was showing pictures and telling stories and testimonials from these Brazilian farmers of how these multi species cover crops were just changing what they were doing. You know, to that point, the only people that we knew that were doing cover crops were doing, you know, very either simple mixes or no mixes at all. Sorghum, Sudan, crimson clover, Neo radishes were kind of coming on as the craze at that time, but people were just kind of doing radishes by themselves. And so when he was introducing us to that concept of that, that wonderful diversity, it really resonated that, yeah, maybe that's something that we're missing. And so Gabe Brown and Jay Fuhrer were at that conference in 2006. And they took those concepts and went back to Bismarck and they started doing some experiments in 2006 and they had a brutally dry summer, the summer of 2006 in Bismarck and they had planted different cover crop species in monoculture and then they planted everything together. I think they just kind of threw it all together in a mix as you would expect. The monoculture strips, they all, they all just burn up. You know, they just, you know, with three inches of rain for the whole year, there was just nothing there to grow anything. But then you go over to where the mix was and it didn't, I mean it was, it looked stressed for sure, but I mean it was, it was two and a half, three feet tall and had a tremendous amount of biomass. And I didn't personally, I mean they're very famous pictures. I think everybody has probably seen those pictures. I didn't get to go on that tour but, but I remember Ray Ward, you know, everybody knows Ray Ward, he went on that bus tour and he told me when they got off the bus and they saw that he said it was just the damnedest thing I'd ever seen. Keith it was this. And because how could it do that on such limited resources? And so seeing those pictures and hearing Adamir Brian and I said, you know, we really need to try this. At the time, you know, one of our most successful agronomic practices was what we called eco till wheat or eco tail corn. And so you would, you would plant wheat, you would leave the stubble, you would no till, you would, but you'd keep the weed sprayed all summer long. So you have this beautiful wheat stubble sitting there just soaking up moisture like a big old sponge. And you plant corn into that the next year and you know, it would add 20, 30 bushels to your corn. And so we didn't want to, we didn't want to harm that system. So I applied for a SARAH grant, Sustainable Ag Research and Education in 2008. And we got just one of the small farmer rancher grants, I think I got $5,000 to buy moisture sensors. And so we put them in at one foot, two foot and three foot levels and we had, I don't know, 20 some different monoculture species and then two or three mixes and then planted the rest of the field for the livestock graze. And through the course of that summer, and we didn't have a particularly dry summer, we actually had some decent rainfall, some decent moisture, but we were monitoring the soil moisture on, on an hourly basis actually. And it would, you know, data loggers would create graphs and the whole works. And so what we saw in doing that, what the. What the moisture sensors told us, was that anything planted in a monoculture used a lot more, significantly more moisture than the mixes did. The mixes were. They just simply were more efficient. And I don't know that I can explain it, certainly couldn't explain it then. Even now, I mean, we. Now we know it's, you know, greatly related to the biological workings of what's going on under there. Back in 2008, we didn't even recognize biology as a strong component of it, but. But we saw that the moisture charts showed us that anything in monoculture by the end of the season, they weren't stressed because we had plenty of moisture, but the soil was much drier than where we had the mixes. And then the second thing we learned is that the cattle did amazing on these cover crops. They came off that field, you know, and this is a wheat stubble field. They would have never been grazing on that in our normal system. But they came off fat, you know, turnips hanging out of their mouth. And, I mean, they just looked like they'd been in a feedlot. And then the third thing was, as we were trying to pull together all the seed to do this experiment, it was. It was difficult find a lot of the seed. It just wasn't readily available, you know, in an easy fashion. And so based on all those things, we said, well, maybe we could start selling this. We'd been previously selling certified seed wheat, so I wouldn't say we knew the seed industry seed business, but, you know, we at least had some awareness. And so we launched green cover in 2009 that next year, and mixed enough, shipped enough seed out the door for about a thousand acres. We didn't even mix any of that. We just went to another place and got it and kind of distributed it. And from there it took off and it grew. And we started mixing seed in 2010. And we've been pouring concrete and hiring people and buying seed and mixing seed. And, you know, now we. We supply enough seed for well over a million acres every year now.

And you're also at the stage now where you're having seed contract grown for you, am I right?

Yeah, the vast majority, I would say 60 to 70% of what we sell is grown through what I call our grower network. And most of those growers are customers of ours. They were customers first. So we knew that they were good farmers. But just because you're a good farmer does not mean you're a good Seed grower. There is a difference. It's a little bit different mindset. You know, we're able to identify the people who are both good farmers and good seed growers, who pay attention to those details, who are good enough managers, you know, to, to look at the little things that make a difference between grain and seed. And so yes, I, you know, we probably have this year not as many acres as some years in the past because we overproduced on some, a few things, but typically we'll have well over 10,000 acres contract produced with. You know, I'm sure we have over 100 growers that have grown at one time or another, probably across a dozen different states.

Thank you, Keith, for sharing that history and that background. This is there even. There are pieces to this that I wasn't fully aware of. But I'm very intrigued by your experiment to put moisture sensors underneath monocultures versus diverse species. And here we are now, 15 years later. Do you have any further thoughts into what the contributing factors may have been or might be that cause these diverse mixes to. I'm going to use the phrase to use moisture differently, to use less moisture than monocultures. And kind of the follow up question to that is across much of the dry land west and dry land wheat production areas, there is this kind of foundational paradigm that has emerged over the last 60, 70 years that we need to have a dry land or we need to have a fallow year to preserve moisture for the following year. How does that arithmetic change with a diverse cover crop as compared to what we were experimenting with decades ago of single cover crops?

Well, I say, I'm, I'm not sure we still completely understand the mechanisms. But one of the blessings of being where we're at and where you're at too is we get to meet a lot of really smart, a lot of sharp people from across the world and, you know, gather insights and try to think about possibilities. You know, so one thing, John, we're so, as farmers, we're so used to growing monoculture cash crops that we don't even think about, you know, what is that environment like for a plant? And what it's like is it's the most competitive environment that it could ever be put into is in a monoculture because all your neighbors and they're in their close, your close neighbors, they all want the exact same thing you do at the exact same time. And so for a corn plant or a soybean plant or a wheat plant to be planted in a monoculture field, a highly, highly Competitive environment. All your neighbors want the same thing you do all at the same time, and you're just interested in getting your own stuff. And so it's a very competitive environment. Whereas if it's in a mix or a diverse cover crop blend. Now if I'm a corn plant, but my neighbor is a cow pea or it's a radish or a buckwheat, and we don't need the same thing at the same time. Our roots aren't at the same depth, our leaf canopies are at different heights. We have different microbes doing work for us. And so I think the first thing is it's a cooperative environment versus a competitive environment when we, when we have a really good mix. And one of the things, John, that Christine Jones was, you know, when we had the pleasure of meeting with her out at Rick's this summer, you know, she talked about how these plants can not only share nutrients back and forth, but they share their microbes. Right. You know, they're actually sharing their microbes. Oh, hey, you need this? Well, I've got extra of these. Here you go. It probably doesn't work quite that simply, but, but it's not just the diversity of the plants, it's the diversity of the microbes and the ability and the willingness of those plants to share both the microbes and the nutrients. You know, Chris, Christine Nichols, another great soil scientist, microbiologist, you know, she's got a great talk and we had an article in our Soil Health Resource guide on this of how plants can share nutrients back and forth, the plant to plant nutrient exchange. But that only happens when you have the biology present. That only happens through the mycorrhiza, you know, hyphal network. But, but when you have all that working for you, then plants can share nutrients back and forth as well as, as, you know, moisture in needed situations. So I think those are some of the reasons, you know, I've heard people say, well, you know, when you have a lot of microbes out there and the microbes die, they release some moisture. And I don't know, I haven't studied that enough. But, but I think the biggest thing is it's a cooperative environment versus competitive. That's, that's kind of where that makes sense to us when we kind of think about how those interactions are happening.

How significant is the moisture savings? How significant is the moisture gain? And this comes back to my question is, is it justifiable to grow a diverse cover crop mix in a summer fallow year between wheat crops and. Or do we still risk losing too much moisture that comes at the expense of a wheat crop. Or how much are we able to conserve?

Yeah, well, that's a great question. And there's been a number of experiments done on that, you know, for, for us in our situation. I'll just, I'll address the fallow situation in just a second. The other thing that we started thinking about was we started doing the math. You know, we're in an area that gets 25, 26 inches of rainfall. So, you know, not, not Ohio, but it's also not Colorado. So we're kind of in the middle. And in that wheat, that eco till wheat, corn type rotation, you know, we're harvesting that wheat in July, but it's really done using moisture in June and we're planting corn, you know, the next April, but it really isn't using any moisture until May. So we essentially have 11 months. 11 months where we have tried to prevent anything from growing in that soil. Well, in a typical year, you know, in 11 months we're going to get what, 20 inches of rainfall. Even in a dry year, we're probably going to get 12. You know, most soils can't hold nearly that much. And so, you know, when you can't hold the moisture, it's either running off the top, which is bad, or it's draining out the bottom, which is bad. Both of those are bad situations. So if you can't physically hold the moisture that you're getting during a time frame anyway, why not utilize some of that in the most efficient method that you can to put carbon into the soil to potentially grow nitrogen, to break up compaction, to prevent weeds, you know, prevent erosion. There's, you know, all the benefits that cover crops can do. Why not use some of that moisture to do that? And that's, that's one of the lights that kind of clicked on for us was do the moisture map. Can you hold what you would typically get anyway? Now most people don't notice that because when that big 3 inch rain comes and they don't have their soil covered, well, they're not getting three inches, they're maybe getting half an inch because that's what their infiltration was. So, you know, the COVID crops can help you get more of it in the soil and then help you store. So in the fallow situation, and we do work with a number of, you know, western Nebraska, western Kansas, eastern Colorado, the farmers who, you know, fallow is a very big part of that wheat rotation. And we have gotten some of them, some of them have had some pretty good successes doing what we call a fallow replacement cover crop mix. And so typically what we would do there in the fallow year, we would put together a fairly simple mix. For spring planting. High on carbon, we want a high carbon nitrogen ratio, because in most situations it's easier to buy nitrogen than it is to buy carbon. So grow your carbon by your nitrogen, especially in an arid environment where you may not have a lot of chances to do that. So oats, barley would be kind of the base of it, but there'd be, there'd be a few peas, maybe some lentils, safflower, rapeseed, flax. So, you know, some things like that. So, you know, probably seven or eight things in there they plant that, they let it go until the oats starts to make a seed head. So typically around the 1st of June or something, and then they terminate it and they just let that residue stand the rest of the summer. And so the moisture that that diverse cover crop mix uses, because it does use moisture, you know, there's people out there that say that we're saying that it doesn't use any moisture. And that's not what we're saying. We're saying the net difference is that there may not be any significant moisture difference in the systems. And so the moisture that's used is replaced or it's made up for by better infiltration. Because, you know, there's a lot of controversy when you talk to farmers about global warming, climate change, all of those things. But there's almost universal agreement when you talk to farmers, that the rainfall events that we're getting now, as compared to 20, 30, 40 years ago, they're less frequent and more intense now. What's causing that? Who's to blame? You know, we're not smart enough to know that, but everybody will pretty much agree that the way we get our precipitation is different. And so when you have less frequent and more intense rainfall events, you better be ready to catch it when it comes, because you don't know when the next one is coming. And so, you know, even if we're just growing, you know, oat stubble that's, you know, two and a half feet tall, that makes a huge difference. And how much of that, you know, July rainfall, you know, when we get that three inches in July and that's all we get in six weeks, I get a lot of that in the soil. You know, the, the above ground biomass is breaking. The impact of that raindrop, it's not blowing apart the top of my soil so that it's crusting, I'm shading the, the soil now. So I greatly reduce my evaporation and then, you know, as compared to tillage fallow. Well, I'm not, I'm not bringing up that moisture every time I do tillage and, and losing it that way as well. So certainly I think in a well managed system like that, and so cover crops in an arid environment, it always has to do with the recovery period after the COVID crop use before your next cash crop. You know, we would never recommend a dry land, you know, arid environment guy to plant cereal, rye, let that grow as big as you can and plant green into it and expect to have success. You know, that can work in the eastern corn belt, it's not going to work in the, in the more arid west. So you have to intelligently design your system so that you're building in those recovery periods where you let the COVID crops do what they do best, you know, with the better infiltration, less evaporation to recover the moisture that they use and maybe even have a net gain in the end when it comes to that. So that's kind of the, the approach that we employ for the arid areas. You know, it's pretty risky in an arid dry land area to have an overwintering cover crop. So we really like crops at winter kill because we can get all of our growth in the summer and the fall, let that winter kill, and then that's, you know, hopefully we have a little bit of standing residue that can help catch snow, which is such an important part of the arid moisture cycle. But if it blows off again, you don't get credit for that. And so those are some of the approaches and the thought processes that we take there.

You know, Keith, I'm thinking about the way that you described the, the cooperative, this cooperative environment when you have diverse, different species collaborating. And recently I've been thinking about quorum sensing. I've studied some of Steven Buhner's work and I know Christine Jones has talked about this and others have as well. And it seems to me like there are, there are kind of three different levels of quorum sensing or three different types. You have one level of quorum sensing where you have one particular microbial species establish a large enough community that it begins quorum sensing as a community of one species. And then second, you have quorum sensing that occurs with the entire microbial network, the entire microbiome that's in the soil. And third, you have a level of quorum sensing that includes the plant communities as well, where the Plants are really collaborating with each other and competing with each other. And maybe number two and number three are the same. They probably are. But as you're describing all these benefits from a moisture conservation perspective, this heretical idea pops into my mind. If we have all these benefits from diverse cover crops that aren't using all this, that aren't competing for all the same nutrients and at the same growth stages and so forth as you described so well, is there a way we can replicate that with our quote unquote crash crops? Why are we insisting on planting cash crops as monocultures? And what if we could derive similar benefits? Like, why do we have to plant cover crops to get these benefits? Why can't we also get these benefits from the crops that we're planting?

Well, it comes down to, you know, hitting the easy button. Monocultures are the easy button when it comes to, you know, cropping. Because now I can have a herbicide that kills everything except the one thing that I'm trying to grow. You know, now we can manage, you know, you know, high fertility, all those things. So. And we can do it at scale because now, you know, with the monoculture and the technologies that are out there and available, you know, we can farm thousands of thousands of acres with, you know, minimal amount of labor input to do that. So doing what you're doing is a much more challenging management situation, much more difficult to do at scale, certainly does not mean that we shouldn't do it, but it is going to be more difficult and people are doing it. So, you know, some of the, some of the crops that we are selling as cover crops have been grown in a polyculture type setting, like what you're talking about. And there's really two ways to accomplish what you're talking about doing. One is polyculture, where we're growing multiple things together or harvesting all of it, and then we're separating it out or we're using it as, you know, I mean, if, if you're selling it as livestock feed, well, then, you know, who cares if there's some mung beans in your milo, because that's just adding protein to the overall ration. Or if there's some buckwheat or sunflowers, you know, that should be a good thing when it comes to the livestock feed industry, man, that thing is ran by the nutritionist. And if you can't convince them, you're never gonna make your way into a feedlot or a dairy operation. So it's very difficult to sell a product like that to the large Feeders, because, you know, they have to pay so much attention to the rations, and if you can't supply them with enough feed, you know, they're not going to bother changing the ration. But if you're feeding your own livestock or you've got a small feeder down the road, then, then why not grow a polyculture, you know, harvesting multiple things together. So that's. That's one way. Rye and hairy vetch grow very well together. Triticale and hairy vetch, oats and peasants, flax and chickpeas. These are awesome examples of COVID crop seeds that we sell that were grown as polyculture cash crops. But the other way to do it, and I'll just say this real quickly here, is to just do intercropping with your cash crop. So now we're still just harvesting one crop. So that simplifies the harvest process, eliminates the need for having to do a separation later on. But we have multiple things growing out there. So a really good example is if I grow sunflowers as a cash crop, well, I can grow flax and buckwheat and peas and cow peas and all these different things under the canopy of the sunflowers. They're giving me the cooperative environment, they're giving me the benefits, and they stay low enough that typically they don't become a harvest issue or make their way into the grain tank.

You know, you mentioned growing monocultures being the easy button, and particularly in the case of herbicides. While I understand that, I wonder if it isn't at least partially, also just a comfort button as much as an easy button, because when I think about. And you have much more experience in this than I do. But isn't it true that when you have a diverse combination of COVID crops, how frequently do you see weeds be a significant challenge in that ecosystem? I practically never see it, or I don't. I don't recall seeing it very often because you have such a diversity of different plant species growing that it seems to prevent weeds from ever being significant.

Yeah, I. Our experience has been if the COVID crops can get ahead of the weeds, then the weeds really don't become an issue. But we've seen people where they planted the COVID crops, they think that they can cheat the system a little bit, Plant the COVID crops into a field where the weeds are already there and coming, even if they're small, but they're there and established, then that can be a situation that gets out of control pretty quickly. You know, the weeds will always be there. They may even take off and overtake the COVID crop. But when the COVID crop has a fair chance, you know, to get out and get ahead of the weeds? Yeah, typically. Typically we don't see big issues. Assuming that the COVID crop is planted, you know, at appropriate rates, it's thick enough because anywhere where you have gaps or skips or thin spots, you know, then the weeds are going to come on. The soil is signaling for something to grow there. And there's plenty of plenty in the seed bank that will, will come forward if you don't put something out there.

When I'm thinking about the various examples that you provided of developing this cooperative plant ecosystem in the cropping environment, you gave the example of sunflowers and growing diverse plant species underneath the sunflower canopy. Do you see similar benefits from a moisture conservation perspective as you do with a diverse cover crop mix?

Interesting thought there. I don't know that we've done the testing like that in a, in a, you know, intercede or a, you know, companion cropping type situation like that. Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't think it would be, you know, some people would look at that and go, well, man, you're loading up your soil profile with plants that's obviously going to use a whole bunch of moisture. But does it. I don't know. We have not done any testing or monitoring in that situation. Typically, the experiences that I'm familiar with where we've done like the sunflowers, we've done it, we've had neighbors do it. I've got one of our guys that grew cereal rye for us as a cover crop. He's got 300 and some acres of sunflowers growing right now with the Companions, but, but it's under irrigation because it's essentially, it's double cropping with companion cropping. So he's really loading up his system. I'm not sure, although I guess there's been some guys down in Kansas. Do the sunflowers with the Companions in a dry land situation, you would certainly think so. I just, I don't have any experiments or any data to back that up.

It's something interesting to think about because, you know, I'm, I'm thinking of this from where this, where this train of thought is coming from is in the crop production world from an agronomic and nutrition management perspective. We've had this idea for a long time that we need, that we have. We grow crops that have an extractive effect on the soil, removing carbon, removing nutrients and so forth, and that to replenish those we need to grow cover crops, crops to replenish. What we're removing and what we've observed many times over, is that when you balance the plant's nutritional profile to increase its photosynthesis, you can, you can replenish soil carbon while you are growing a crop. Like it's plants, really healthy plants shouldn't have this extractive effect on soil. It's true that many do, but. But it's a result of nutritional imbalances and so forth. And so I'm just wondering if we can adapt that train of thought as well to moisture management to say, well, if it is monocultures that are really problematic, then can we shift our monoculture cash crop thinking to something that's a bit more diverse?

Yeah, that's an interesting concept. It'd be fun to run some of those types of experiments. I want to go back also to, to one additional thing that really prevents a lot of people from trying this and certainly trying it at any kind of scale, and that's a crop insurance program. You know, if you're heavily dependent upon crop insurance, which, you know, many people are, you know, in this agriculture environment, it's very difficult to do any of these things and continue to get crop insurance coverage on it. A lot of times they just don't know what to do with, with that. Even if it's not hurting the cash crop, they're not really sure how to handle that. Now, there have been some exceptions, you know, some interseeding of corn at V3 or before. Some of that is starting to become a little bit more mainstream. But it's very difficult to get crop insurance if you're growing, you know, rye and vetch together or, you know, chickpeas and flax together. So I don't know that it's completely impossible. And maybe down the road that will change. But certainly the crop insurance program precludes many people from doing or trying this type of thing at scale. Yeah.

One of the pieces you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation was livestock performance. And here a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to talk about the differences in various plant species and how they influence soil differently. We're looking at warm season versus cool season, grasses and forbs and annuals versus perennials, and how, because all these different plant groups partition sugars differently, they move them around in the foliage and the root systems differently. And we're talking about the ability of forbs and broadleaves to regenerate soil more rapidly than grasses, and particularly at depth. And this, the. The audience is a Group of livestock producers and I made the comment that I have observed many times when, when we're growing a pasture that has a large component of broadleaves, it seems the cattle perform better than what would be estimated based purely on looking at biomass alone, that there is this, this performance benefit where the livestock perform remarkably well on broadleaves as compared to grasses. What, what are your observations?

Well, you grow grass if you want lots of biomass. You grow the broadleaves or the Forbes if you want a lot of nutrition and mineral cycling. And so, you know, as you look at a natural native ecosystem at first glance, and I'm talking about a perennial here, at first glance you would drive past and go, well, that's almost all grass. But if you get out there and you start looking at number of plants, number of species, you know, and again, Christine Jones, you know, mentioned this as well, that the majority of, you know, the natural prairie type systems were, were not grasses and they were not even legumes, but they were forbs. And I don't think she meant the majority of the biomass being produced, but the majority of the number of plants.

Right.

And so, you know, as, as, as humans, you know, we just look at what we can see and go, oh well, these grasses must be, you know, doing the majority of the heavy lifting because you know, look at all of that out there. But you know, we don't. It, it really is, it really is. And so I, I remember early on too, Ray Ward, who runs Ward Laboratories, has done a lot of great things for soil health as well. He's got some farm ground in Saline County, Nebraska. And I remember early on he wanted to do an experiment with a grass based or grass dominant cover crop mix and a broadleaf dominant cover crop mix. And he's planting this into wheat stubble because again, he was in that similar rotation. We were with the eco tail know wheat and then corn. And so he ran, you know, we made up the mixes, heavily grass dominant, heavily broadleaf dominant. And then he did forage clippings, you know, so testing just the above ground biomass of what grew. And the broadleaf based cover crop mix was significantly higher, particularly in calcium, because that's one of the things he was looking at was calcium cycling because you know, in these heavily fertilized environments, you know, we struggle to keep our ph up. You know, we're continue to drive that ph down with the application of nitrogen fertilizers. And so having a broadleaf dominated cover crop was, you know, deeper roots, deeper tap roots and it was bringing up more of that calcium that had leached down, you know, beyond what a lot of the grass species could get, and it was bringing it back up, had it in the plants, you know, sunflowers and some of the radishes and safflower and you know, then when those die, you know, we're not harvesting them, we're not removing them. When they die, they're depositing that calcium and those other nutrients back on top to kind of reset the cycle of where those are at. So I've always remembered that. And you know, when people talk about nutrient cycling, you know, we, we do try to go more broadleaf with, with those sorts of mixes if that's what their goal is now, if their goal is to produce as much biomass, hey, I've got a really erosion problem here. I just really need to stop that before we do anything else. Yeah, we're probably coming out with a pretty heavy grass dominated mix because, you know, nothing's going to prevent the erosion like a good grass cover crop.

One of the pieces that I'm intrigued by in this concept of nutrient cycling I've, I've done, I haven't done so much recently, but years ago I did a lot of tissue analysis, looking at different forage analysis of different broadleaves and I think we don't appreciate enough the quantity of minerals these plants move around. When you do the, when you do the math and you look at the biomass that's out there, the mineral content that it's moving, we're not talking about moving 20 pounds or 50 pounds of calcium from down in the B horizon up to the soil surface. We're talking hundreds of pounds per acre, sometimes as much, much as three to 400. And that's just calcium. It's also true of all the other elements as well.

Yeah, for sure. And, and if you were to really, you know, run that through your calculator, that, that's, that's a lot of dollars worth of fertility that you don't have to put on if, if you can cycle that. And some crops, you know, like Buckwheat for example, not only is it moving it around, but it's changing the form, you know, so buckwheat roots, you know, have some unique acids that they exude and they're able to convert phosphorus that's not available to most plants, but they're converting it, they're using it. And then when that plant dies, not only is there more phosphorus now available, but it's in a, it's in a form that other plants now can use. So, you know, there's, there's, it's exciting to think about that. And then when you, when you compare that then, or when you combine that then with the biology that they're bringing along with them. And again, this is one of the things that just blew me away that Dr. Jones told us is that, you know, a single seed can have up to, what did she say, 7 or 8 billion microbes in and on that seed. So they're, they're bringing their own microbes to the party, especially when it's seeds grown in a regenerative environment. And I know, you know, you and I had a webinar on, you know, regeneratively grown seed and why that's important, important. But when they come with the right micro package, then what they do, they can do it much better, much quicker and much more efficiently.

Well, since diving deep into James White's work and into Christine Jones work, the way that I've been describing it when I'm giving presentations is to say in the context of regenerating a soil's microbiome, we need to begin thinking about seeds as microbial inoculants. Like every seed is a vector for a microbial community and that we need to think about having this diverse plant families and diverse species as vectors for many different types of microbial species. And this is actually one of the things that I'm so intrigued and excited about your work, Keith, is as you're working with contract growers to grow seed, you actually, you have the capacity to ensure that the seed that you are selling has this full complement of biology and that it's coming from soils that are microbial diverse. And to me, that is, that is really exciting because that's where the magic is going to come from.

It is. And we're, we're pushing more and more into that area in, in several ways. You know, number one, getting the right growers, they're growing it in the right way. You know, so it with regenerative practices, getting in the right seed to start with because, you know, they, you know, they will add biology as they grow it. But also, you know, we want the best seeds possible to start that growing process and then, you know, when possible to grow it in a polyculture or at least a companion crop situation. Now that's on a fairly small percentage of what we do. Right. But we're looking at expanding that. One other hurdle to overcome in that John that I did mention earlier too, sometimes it's the state Certification society, so, so like for example, all of our Oats is grown as certified oats because we're using some of the newer, better varieties out of South Dakota. They're just, you know, they're just more productive. But they won't let us, you know, none of the, the crop improvement associations will let us grow certified oats in combination with peas in the same field. They will not certify those fields. And we've argued and we've, you know, tried to convince them, and it's mostly because, you know, they're. They're not sure that they can. Their inspectors could walk through the field, which seems like with the technology available these days, that's kind of a lame excuse. But anyway, if you're growing certified seed, you again, you're going to bump up against some of those regulations. So, you know, the combination of all those, the right growers, the right fields, the right seed to start with, and then, you know, we're, we're trying to figure out what the best primers or inoculants to put on the seeds, whether it's going for seed production or just going out as a cover crop. You know, we have access to a lot of different biological and microbial seed inoculants. You know, we've for years have been using some different compost extracts. You know, through our Elevate Ag company, we've got some different products from a company out of India. And then recently we started carrying and using some of the AEA products as well. Biokoat Gold is now an option for people to be able to use right on the seed as well as Seed Flare, the, you know, the new mineral microbial or the mineral supplement mineral inoculant. So we can. And again, there's going to be certain times where those products, you know, this one will be better for this and this one for that. Sometimes it's customer preference, sometimes it's, you know, based on what we think is going to be best for them. But we've got access to a lot of different microbial products to put on. And I know some people just see that as another input and they don't want to do it at all. And others are like, oh, yeah, how much can you get on there for me? So, you know, again, we're still learning, but we've got access to a lot of good products.

You know, actually, I now remember more clearly it was on another topic. But once you start using Seed Flare and once you start using biocode Gold, I'm not. First of all, we're very pleased and proud of that collaboration. So thank you for that. But also, are you sure you want to talk about that publicly with your, with your other vendors? Because all of a sudden I'm pretty clear in my mind that we have, we have the one microbial inoculant to rule them all and all of a sudden everyone else is in a tenuous position.

Well, strange that you say that. They say the same thing. Yeah.

But the question is, what do the plants say? That's the competition I'm certain will win.

Yes. And you know, there's it. We have tried to do a lot of different trials and experiments with biologicals and it's difficult to do good field trials. What we found at Green Cover is that we're really good at putting out plots. We're not so good when it comes to like collecting data and analyzing differences and doing a lot of that. It's just, it takes you. If we're going to do that, we almost need to hire a full time, you know, research person that that's what they're tasked with doing. And we just haven't been able to justify or afford that full time position yet. But I think eventually that is what we need to do so that we can be doing a lot of these trials with the different microbial products as well as different seed combinations. Right. And then we need to do it more than just in our own backyard, you know, because we're doing it, you know, where, you know, we've been farming for, you know, while our family's been there 100 and some years. But you know, we need to get it out into different areas and have other cooperators doing it. And it's just, just, I mean, you know, you guys do way more research and testing than we do. It's difficult and it's expensive and it's time consuming.

Yeah.

To do all of that. Yeah.

We have a number of full time people dedicated to it and we, they never have enough bandwidth to do all the things we want to do. But you know, Keith, we should have a conversation about collaborating on some of those things because I think a lot of the trials that we would like to conduct could overlap and yield multiple levels of multiple layers of results.

Yeah, sounds good.

So Keith, when you think back over the last, you started down this pathway in 2006 and you think back over the last couple of decades, what are some of the memorable moments that really stand out in your memory that really caught your attention and caused a pivot in the way you think about COVID crops and cropping systems in general?

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously you Know the, the small trial that you ran in 2008, visually, we couldn't see that much difference between the different strips and plots because we had a summer with sufficient moisture. But when we looked at the charts or we looked at the graphs that those moisture sensors were showing us, you know, that was eye opening. You know, maybe there is really something to these mixes and the power of diversity. And so really, you know, when we started Green Cover, it was largely based on that fact that diverse mixes would use that moisture much more efficiently. So we set our whole system up to allow the farmer to customize a mix. So, you know, we, we didn't at that time, but now we've got over 120 different types of types of seed, and we allow people to essentially build whatever mix they want to. They can choose any of those seeds. Now if they don't make sense or it's like that's really the wrong time of the year to plant this, you know, we'll try to counsel and talk to them about it. And a lot of times they just say, well, here's what I want to do. And then we put the mix together for them. But we set our whole business up to do the customized diverse mixing. We built the Smart Mix Calculator, an online tool to allow people to, you know, kind of play around and experiment with putting different mix combinations together on paper and kind of see how it might change some of the different outcomes. So, you know, the 2008 experiment was certainly the first, but, you know, in 2012, you know, very, very dry across a big area, ourselves included. But where we were employing soil health practices, both no till and cover crops, the crops held on, the cash crops following those practices held on so much longer than our neighbors did. And now we still didn't have good crops, don't get me wrong. But they held on and you could see the potential was there. If we could have just got that one rain, you know, if that one rain would have come in July that sometimes we get. And now it never came. But our, our crops were healthy enough. They, they hung in there long enough that it gave us a big window for something to happen that could have saved it. And, you know, some years it does, and some years it doesn't. But, you know, that was eye opening as well to see how the soil health can help those crops be healthy enough to hang on to, to try to. It just opens up that window of opportunity, opportunity for a moisture event to occur or to happen. So, so that was, that was good confirmation there as well. You Know, and then, you know, just. I don't get out to customer fields as often as I would like, but when I have been out there, it's just really interesting to see them point out, you know, you know, you know, weed control is a big one. You know, we get a lot of reports back from people, you know, where we had this cover crop, we just didn't have the weed issues that we did where we didn't have it or, you know, where, where you plant a cover crop but you skip or you have a gap, you know, where the drill didn't get in the ground or you drove too wide and it's just filled with weeds. And then on the sides of the COVID crops are almost no weeds. You know, things like that. And we see that every year because, you know, we, we always drive wide or don't get the drill down in time. So you can see that almost every year. You know, those are pretty stunning as well. Yeah, this, this stuff is really doing its job. And it's, it's, you know, filling that gap that nature wants to fill, you know, with weeds when you don't have them out there. So, you know, and there's just countless encounters with, you know, people like Christine Jones and Chris Nichols and James White and yourself. You know, it's just, it's just been a real place, pleasure, her real gift to be able to learn from, you know, the people who have great knowledge but also great experience and bringing the combination of those things together. It's very exciting. And to meet someone like Walter Goldstein, who we, you know, met this summer, you know, who's actively working on corn that, you know, will associate with nitrogen fixing organisms to potentially, potentially have corn that, you know, needs very little nitrogen inputs. That's incredibly exciting to me to think that, I mean, that. Talk about a game changer, that could be a game changer.

And the key point is it's not something he's trying to do, it's something that he's already done.

He's. He's trying to continually make it better. Yes. Yeah, true. Yeah.

When, when you think about all of.

These.

Advances in knowledge and experience, particularly those that have come over the last decade, it seems to me that there is this compounding effect that is occurring where new knowledge, new information is coming in faster and faster. How, what do you see happening in the future? What is your vision for the future, both with green cover seeds, with COVID crops, with COVID crop management and so forth? What are some of the new things that you expect to see emerging in the future? That perhaps aren't visible to many people right now.

Yeah, you know, use the, the word, you know, compounding effects. And I, I always remember, you know, Alan Williams again is one of those thought leaders in, in the movement. And I always remember in some of the early presentations I heard from Alan, he talks about the compounding and cascading effects of the soil health practices, you know, when we put them out in the field. And I think that we do see that, you know, we're starting to build on some of the knowledge that we have. We're starting to understand it's still a very small part of what's going on. But I think we're at least asking the right questions now. I'm not even sure we were asking the right questions, you know, when we first started. So hard to get the right answers when you're not asking the right questions. So I think we're at least asking the right questions. And that primarily has to do with biology and trying to understand better how the biology influences the plant and how the plant influences the biology. So I think that we're going to see a lot more with that as some of the technological advances allow us to take a better look at what's going on down there, maybe have more accurate measurements. You know, some of the DNA testing that's out now that, you know, used to be only affordable for the very large companies, you know, now, you know, it's very easy to, you know, and it's still expensive, you know, $300 or something to get a complete DNA test to really see what's going on out there. And now I know with the work that, you know, Dr. Laura Kavanaugh is doing with AEA, that price point has the potential to drop even further and further and further. And as, as that comes down, we can get better glimpses and peaks into what's going on in the soil. And then, and then when we apply a biological, or we do a different mix or we try a different practice now we can run a DNA test and see what actually happened down there. I think some of that kind of technology is going to fundamentally change, at least how we can evaluate how a change in practice affected the soil. And then the other thing is, you know, we're, you know, we primarily have been a cover crop seed company, you know, just selling cover crop seed and seed mixes. You know, we're, we're doing some of the biologicals now. You know, we're looking at, you know, what is, what are other places that make sense or is it logical to expand into and one of the, you know, and we do a lot of educational events. You mentioned that early on, you know, we, we have always focused very heavily on education. We do events called the Regenerative Nexus Summits which we're very thankful that you've been a part of. And now AEA is actually going to be a big sponsor, a major sponsor in helping us do that because again, just like plants, we can't do it on our own. We need collaborators, we need partners. And so we're grateful for that partnership. But one of the people that we met last year at one of those events was the, the Bass Hybrids company, Ed Baumgartner, who is actively breeding corn hybrids, non GMO corn hybrids, but doing his breeding work in regenerative environments. And so trying to develop these hybrids that haven't been pampered and spoon fed, you know, in, in a high fertility, high tillage, high input type system. It's just like if you're going to do grass fed beef, you're not going to go out and get genetics that were designed for a corn feedlot. Well, we're going to try to grow regenerative corn. We shouldn't be using genetics that were developed for high input systems. And so we're, we're excited about some of the work that, that Ed and his team are doing there with trying to develop those hybrids and we're, we're actually going to convert a lot of our acres over to using these non gmo, more regeneratively grown hybrids and we're also going to help other people get access to that seed. We don't know exactly what that looks like, if it's a full fledged dealership or just helping coordinate that. We're still talking about that. But we do believe that the ability to have non GMO and non treated, they will only treat it if you ask them to non treated seed in for a regenerative type environment. We believe that's important and so we're going to do what we can to help facilitate that.

That is very exciting and something that's much needed and we need that same type of work to come forward in soybeans, in wheat and in many other crops. And I know there are people who are working on it in small ways here and there, but there is such a tremendous opportunity. I think that you're spot on, Keith. This is something that there is a growing demand for and almost next to no supply. There is next to no supply for soybean seed, wheat seed, corn seed, etc. That is adapted to thriving in a biologically friendly environment, which often means genetics that have larger, more robust root systems that have larger diameter stems and that just their performance. The piece that I find interesting in the, the limited observations that I have where people have selected crops to thrive in these environments, every example that I know of those same plants also, when they were taken into conventional environments, they also excelled and outperformed their. Because the fundamentals of when you have a collaborative relationship with biology and a large robust root system that hasn't been developed on lots of soluble nutrients, then those plants are also going to survive or thrive in mainstream systems as well.

Yeah. So, you know, if you can get those genetics out there, then, you know, it should have the ability to really improve the bottom line because, because again, you know, there's a lot of guys that will grow a decent corn crop this year and still make no money.

Right.

Because of, you know, where the price is compared to the price of production. And so hopefully, you know, this will help down the road, you know, with being able to lower some of those input costs. And again, unfortunately, the crop insurance system is driving a lot of that because, you know, your production history, which is kind of what you get paid on, it's all driven 100% by yield and not by profit. And so, you know, there is a great incentive to grow more bushels even if you don't make money doing it because it kind of pads your aphs on the insurance. I don't know how to fix it. I just know that it's not a great system because it incentivizes the right, wrong things.

Yep, yep. Unintended second order and third order consequences. Yep. Keith, we've, we've discussed a lot of important topics that I'm, I'm really, I'm sure people are really going to love our conversation. What are some important pieces that we haven't yet talked about?

Wow. Yeah, we've, we've been around the block a lot. You know, when, when I go out and I do a lot of speaking, a lot of presentations, just like you do, especially when it comes to the non farm segments. You know, when I talk to non farmers about some of this or when somebody hears my carbonomics talk or you know, some of the different talks that I've done, they come up to me and they say that's incredible. How comes everybody's not doing this? And you know, it's a great question. It's a very innocent question. It's a question that should be asked, but it's got very complicated answers. You know, why is the adoption of these practices not higher than it is? And we, you know, we've talked and touched on some of those things from just, you know, the, the ability to do production at scale, you know, some of the impediments that, you know, crop insurance and other regulations may put on the system. I think that as we work on developing the practices that bring the soil health principles into the field, we also need to be looking at and thinking about what policy changes, what regulatory changes, what mindset changes, what social changes need to be worked on as well to help people adopt these things. You know, what are those barriers? Some of them are economic, some of them are social. You know, some of them are just, again, just this a scale type thing for, you know, people that want to farm 10,000 acres. Not saying it can't be done, but it's more difficult to do some of these practices at that kind of scale. So I think that we need to be looking at how do we get the adoption of these practices and these principles across much, much larger acres. Because for those of us, yourself and myself and many of the people listening here who have seen these principles.