Episode 141: Using Systems-Based Research in Regenerative Agriculture with Cindy Daley

Hi, friends. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast, where I have all kinds of fun conversations that are related to regenerating our soil health, our plant health, livestock health, and ultimately, of course, human health and ecosystem health. Because if we want to be regenerative, we need to regenerate stewardship and we need to regenerate landscapes. I've been looking forward to today's conversation for some time. I have here with me as a guest, Cindy Daly from California. And if you don't know of Cindy's work, I. I would be a little bit surprised about that. But if you don't know, you're about to find out, and we're going to have a very enjoyable conversation. Cindy, thank you for being here. In many ways, I think you have been a pioneer in the space of bridging academia with more innovative farming approaches and collaborating and interacting with innovative farmers, which is something that across the countryside there's sometimes, not always, but there's sometimes a very challenged relationship with academia and some of the more innovative farmers. So I'd love to get your perspective, tell us a bit about your history, your story, and all the work that you've been doing over the last several decades.

Wonderful. And thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to talk about the work that we're doing and to really learn more about really how we're going to move ag forward in the next decade. Because I think we're at a crossroads. Really incredible right now, what's going on. I think out on the field, this regenerative agriculture phenomenon has been a grassroots type effort. We saw it blossom really in the last five, 10 years. And I think it's basically the work that you've been doing and others farmers that have really turned the tide and I think have shown other growers that this is possible. We can actually work in sync with nature and produce better food for society. So I think that there is a lot that needs to happen at that level and that is taking place and the universities need to get on board with this phenomenon. We've been talking about sustainable ag for like five decades. We've been talking about seriously, you know, and we're really not making a lot of. We're not making a lot of progress at the university level. We're still teaching old methodologies. And so we hope to create a renaissance. We want to see a change.

There's so many directions. I want to take this conversation, Cindy, but you just mentioned an interesting point. Why do you think there isn't more Progress, more innovation. Why is academia still teaching old methodology?

Well, I think in many respects they want to feel as though they're providing support to what exists in production, agriculture. So the industry right now is pretty much conventional. I mean, that's our current mode. And they feel as though they need to be fitting into that model. Whereas there are a few of us who feel that the university really needs to be on the bleeding edge. We need to be studying these processes, you know, very similar to what Chris Nichols did on Gabe's farm where she discovered, you know, that wow, you know, these are fungal dominant soils that are producing compounds that are sequestering carbon. How wonderful is that? And she discovered some of those things because she recognized that Gabe was different, that his farming methodology was different, and that it was working. And so she went there, she studied it, and made some pretty sizable breakthroughs in my mind, at least from my perspective. And that's what the university really needs to do. Get out of this reductionist mode of research, which is a total waste of time and money, and jump on board with more of a systems based research project program where you're working in sync with these growers that are really switched on. There are a lot of growers that are now into, you know, 15 years of regenerative farming systems. You know, let's partner with them and figure out how it is that that system is functioning, what are the benefits? And then we can transition the coursework and the classes and the internships and, you know, all of those students that are interested in becoming involved in agriculture can really understand from the grassroots how systems function. That's what we need to be doing at the university level, not what we're doing currently. And I do think that there's been some problems with, you know, soft money. Universities are underfunded, they continue to decline. You know, the budget here in California is terrible. So our budget, you know, is decreasing every year now by quite a bit. And so we're always reliant on soft money. And who has the money? Well, it's going to be Big Ag. And so Big Ag does have an influence on what, what's done from a research perspective and what's taught in the classroom. That's our situation.

When I've been working with growers in the field, I encounter this very distinctive. There's like two very different mindsets that are held by agronomists, by extension agents, by people within academia. There's one mindset that it is our primary purpose to be the gatekeeper and to protect farmers and to Protect growers from unproven technologies. And the other mindset is what you've described of being explorers, being innovators. Let's define, let's try to understand what is happening on these farms who are experiencing unexplainable results. As with what Chris Nichols observed on Gabe Brown's farm, the example that you mentioned. There's many other examples where farmers have documented improvements that are beyond what is understood to be possible with the mainstream model. And so far too often the approach has been rather than trying to understand, okay, what happened here, obviously something happened that would add to our understanding. Instead of taking that approach so frequently we see the approach that just a dismissive perspective that well, that didn't happen or you measured incorrectly or something like that.

I know, and I think when it all boils down to the fact that we're all human and I think we bring, you know, with that ego and I think oftentimes ego can get in the way. They have been trained, you know, through their graduate study to do reductionist type science and you know, how are you going to do that? How are you going to control all variables but one on a farm to really understand. So they're really not even equipped to study, you know, some of these farming systems because they can't get out of that paradigm. They're very limited in terms of, you know, the view. There's some really great academics out there doing some really wonderful work. I mean there really are, but it's because they understand systems and how to study systems and you know, trying to get that published is tough because all of our peer reviewed publications on which everybody, you know, in academia hangs their hat relies on that reduction approach in terms of, you know, scientific methodology. It's very hard to set up these replicable studies where we control all other variables except for this one. And that's not what regenerative ag is. It's not just no till, you know, it's not just conservation, it's not just cover crops. It's developing and finding a system that works together in order to really achieve those soil health principles. So, you know, figure out what works on your farm for your cropping systems in, you know, under your conditions, with water access and what you have available to you and figure out how it is that you re enliven that soil microbiome to do the work for you. So studying that, we really need to have a hydrologist, a soil microbiologist, an agronomist, an economist, you name it. We need about 10 scientists as we train them today. To work together on these farming systems to really understand how they truly function. We've tried to replicate that in a new program that we have. And I'm not trying to plug the work that we're doing.

Please tell us about it.

Well, currently we have four side by side studies going on in California from Blythe up to Chico. And there are four locations where we've got 40 acre contrast, so we've got 40 acre regenerative against 40 acre of a conventional hay rotation in Blythe. That's been going on now really for the last two years. We're going into year three and what we've done is that we brought in some flux tower eddy covariance technology. These flux towers measure the flow of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So when carbon is being drawn down, you can actually monitor that and record that in real time. So that's pretty exciting because up until now all we've been doing is really measuring soil samples and tracking that over time to determine whether or not carbon is being drawn down. Well, with these towers you do get a sense of what's going on in the atmosphere. And then we correlate that back to the soil carbon levels that, you know, we're measuring in the field. So we're sampling soils, we're sampling water, we're, you know, capturing, you know, ET and a variety of soil temperatures, soil moisture levels and the soil, the flux, the carbon flux in the atmosphere. And we're also monitoring economics. So we've, we're working with some of the best farmers in the state. They are very patient and they're very attentive. They're part of our research team. Every month we meet and we talk about what's gone on in the fields and how that method is working for them as compared to what they normally do. And then they get to see the tower data, they get to see the contrast in what's going on with the carbon flux. And that is, that has been a lot of fun because the light comes on said, oh wow, you know, that's, that's exactly when I tilled, that's exactly when I worked in, you know, the corn stubble or the, the cotton. So it's been interesting when you engage the farming community as a, as a CO PI and they have been significant contributors. And not only that, but then they become advocates and some wonderful ambassadors, you know, for this methodology. We've got Dale Tyson down at Hay Day Farms. I mean he, he farms 14,000 acres of hay. It's a hay rotation. He does some export that type of thing. But he's very influential in that region. And so, you know, hosting a field day on Dale's farm is very influential. And it's not even that, but you know, it's all those farmers that are driving by and there's no fences down there, so they're not looking over the fence because there's no livestock there. But ultimately they, they are driving by and they are asking questions. And Dale said, you know, my neighbors know what that yielded before I do because they're out there watching. So, you know, there's that effect, that's that social component of what we do, that's I think, very, very important. And Dale has been instrumental in getting our team in front of the Metropolitan Water District Board on several occasions. They have a whole host of different types of committees. So we've been, you know, down in Los Angeles talking about this data. We have a project on fallowing. They require 10%, all their farm water users to set 10% of their farmland aside for water conservation purposes. And up until now they've been tilling that six times a year. They've been just beating that soil to death. And so, you know, what we have in those situations is powder. And at the onset I was down there and I drove and they had 1500 inch of rain. So very minimal amount of rain where I come from, but that was enough to cause flooding in that region. And all the ponding on all of these fallowed fields. And I took pictures and that's what I took to that field day experience to show these growers what happens with 1500.

I mean really an infiltration rate of.

Zero is exactly, that's exactly it. And the amount of, you know, soil that was running off, the flooding that was taking place, I mean they are creating a real disaster there, destroying their soil legacy. So they are completely upending that. Anyway, so we've had a lot of fun with that particular project and we still, even when we've got the data to show that, you know, in a regenerative system where we have said, okay, well let's, instead of doing this tillage, let's go ahead and just do a regenerative type fallowing system where we're going to keep a living root in the ground, so we're going to be planting a multi species cover in the summertime and even irrigate it just enough to germinate and bring it up. And then we'll do the same thing in the winter, of course. And so then we ended up, because of the long growing seasons There we've got three seedings. So we put in three different cover crops and we have improved that soil dramatically. And considering where we started from, it's pretty impressive. We're almost at 3 tons of carbon per year per hectare in that particular project area. And there's a lot of fields down there that are just pure sand. So they're working with some pretty marginal soil. But there are some fields that are fantastic. So there's a lot of difference in the soil profiles from field to field to field. So it's been a very interesting project. And even with the data to show them just how much more carbon they're drying down, how much better that soil is, how much more water percolation, how much more aggregation they're getting, that to me is really important because we do want water to perk. We need to have groundwater recharge and so. And that water is moving differently through those fields. You know, now that we've been into.

The system in the regenerative agriculture space, there's been lots of conversations about measuring improved water infiltration and there hasn't been adequate conversation about water percolation. We need percolation to go with the infiltration. That's where I see in some regions of, of North America and around the world, I see major compaction issues. That we can actually have good infiltration for the first couple of inches, but then water doesn't percolate, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So in your experience, John, I'm just interested that plow pan tends to exist about 10 inches below the surface. I mean, how have you been addressing that with growers as they transition into no till? Has that been something that you can address or do you mechanically open that up before you go into a no till system? I mean, I've heard both approaches.

It depends a bit on context, soil types etc and what the capacity and the ability is to use cover crops. But generally I am very much in favor of removing it mechanically once and then making sure you don't recreate it. You know, I find it interesting that when you go to areas that have perhaps more challenging environmental ecological conditions than we do, let's take Australia for example. There are large parts of broad acre cropland in Australia where they only use tram lines and control traffic. It's all controlled traffic because they see the benefits. And controlled traffic has not been adopted here in any meaningful way because it's just easy to keep doing what we're doing.

Right. I have seen it with Scott Park. I mean, if that's a farmer that you've not met yet. I'm going to have to introduce you. He is phenomenal. He believes in all of that. And frankly he's also the one who's, you know, providing a lot of consultation on the side by side that we're doing at the university farm because our farm staff has no clue how to do these regenerative practices. So you know, we're bringing in the regene ag farmers to be the consultant. And that's the first thing that he told us to do. Control your traffic on this row cropping. But also before we get started, if we're going to get into this no till system, we have to break up that legacy compaction. And we had a bunch, I mean, so we went in there and we did, we deep ripped it and then we went into our no till system and we're already seeing changes in biology and we're seeing some changes in just how that soil is the tilth of that soil. It's starting to change. So that to me is really an important piece is to prepare to go into a no till system, particularly in.

Dry land environments or environments where water is a challenge, which frankly in today's world is almost universally we need to have our crops be prepared to handle drought stress and to handle moisture stress. And the way to accommodate that is to have large deep root systems. And I see entirely too many crops that have a root system that's 10 to 12 to 14 inches deep and they're farming in a dry land environment and can't figure out why the crop is extremely stressed. You know, we created some of these problems and it's a question of there are some who have a very idealistic perspective who say you should never till, you shouldn't deep rip and you can use cover crops, you can use roots and not iron to break that up. And. Well, I believe that's true. You can, but in what timeline and at what cost?

That's it.

Is it going to take 10 years or 20 years or longer and, and what's the crop cost and the yield drag and economic drag going to be that you burden yourself with?

Yeah, exactly. I think that that preparing before you go there will open up that soil in a way and make it perform much faster so we will get better water infiltration. So that to me is huge. And now I'm beginning to understand, you know, when the farmers in the Midwest that are doing no till say that they can get into their fields earlier in the spring than the full till farmers, I understand now why, because of the ability of that Soil, it reforms its structure, its porosity, it's re established its tilt and its structure so that the water perks and so it's not sitting there. It perks and so it does allow the farmer to get out and start that spring work earlier. It makes sense to me now.

So I want to go back to the beginning of where you started talking about your research projects. And you spoke about how we cannot have this reductionist approach of single factor analysis in regenerative farming systems because we're evaluating an entire system. So I'd like to get your perspective. How are you thinking about research today? How should research be conducted? In other words, what's the alternative to single factor analysis?

And to do this well, well, it's understanding that we're going to have to think a lot bigger rather than trying to control everything with these small little plots, which nobody, nobody necessarily recognizes that as having any inference into, you know, scaled farming. So really understanding multiple contrast, like what we set up with these side by sides and we're doing a lot from, from an experimental design perspective to make sure that we're doing enough sampling and we're doing it at three depths. We're making sure that we're sampling all the different soil components. So we bring in, you know, the, the soil survey maps to make sure that we're sampling all areas and we have enough numbers. That's kind of an important piece. But not trying to control any one part of the system. I mean, we're not just trying to study no till, we're actually trying to study a regenerative system. So if all we were going to be doing is studying no till, we would try to control everything else and just till one side and do no till on the other. But that's not truly how no till performs. I mean we've, we've seen that, you know, and you make marginal improvements. The Wilcox farm in Arizona is a classic example of that. They are true blue conservation farmers. They went into no till 10 years ago, but you know, they stopped the carbon loss with their no till system and their no till approach. They're a conventional corn pinto bean type rotation. They do irrigate in the summer, obviously and Arizona. But they went when we wanted to layer into that multi species and contrast that with single specie and then no cover crop. And boy, it's like there's a synergy between those two practices themselves in looking at those two practices functioning together. It's more than additive, it's synergistic in terms of how they perform together. And if we hadn't done that study, we probably wouldn't really understand that, that as well. But it's looking at that entire system and figuring out how it is that you're going to sample that system in order to truly understand how it performs. So it's not trying to dissect it into its. Its parts. It's really looking at the entire system and sampling that system in all the different disciplines that we need in order to understand how it's farming. So that's why we have a water quality and a water specialist. We have a soil science scientist. We have, you know, an eddy covariance atmospheric carbon flux scientist on board. We have an ag economist on board. We have a soil microbiologist doing the DNA signature changes over time. So we're, we're combining all of these scientists because typically, if they're working independently, they only do that one thing, and that doesn't help a lot. But when we all get together and we do, we meet, you know, every two weeks and kind of talk about the data and how it's fitting together and how these changes in aggregate stability from the soil scientists is really changing the water quality and the water hydrology in the system. It's a really interesting collaboration. It's a lot more difficult to do. It's a lot more difficult to get published because it's not a controlled reductionist science. To do that, you need replication. We've got four farms on board. I would love to be able to do another four farms. And so when you've got eight contrasts out there in these different cropping systems that are typical of California, you can start connecting dots. Well, yeah, it doesn't matter if we're farming alfalfa or if we're growing cotton or if we're growing walnuts. When we use these practices in whatever combinations make sense for that farm, for that cropping system, we see these improvements. We see these changes in the soil tilt and aggregate stability and water infiltration and soil carbon. We're definitely sequestering carbon. And now those soils are functioning as they're supposed to function. So now they're providing nutrients back to the plant as we, you know, originally they should be in a natural system, and so less inputs can be, you know, provided. So we're at that stage now in Blythe, where we are pulling back on some of the fertilizer and some of the inputs on that regenerative system. But it's not the kind of thing you can do overnight. You know, we've got to allow those soils Time to heal. As you know, it just takes time to get that soil engine revving. And so that's. And it's going to be different for every kind of depends on where you're at and just how badly your soil has been beaten up as to how long it's going to take to heal it and to start functioning again as a soil should.

Cindy, tell us a little bit about your story and your journey. What is it that brought you to this work? You've been in this space for. For quite some time. What are some of the memorable moments along the way?

Well, yeah, I was raised in Illinois. My. My folks farmed and my grandparents on both sides farmed. A German Catholic community, and everybody in my family farmed. Everyone farmed. And there were six kids and three farms. And so some of us have to go on and do other things. And I had a passion for learning and I had a passion for agriculture. So I just continued on in my academic pursuits and it ended up bringing me to California. And I had every intention just to come out here and do some graduate work and then go back to the University of Illinois and work with, you know, the professors that I had done my undergraduate with at the University of Illinois. And wow. The Illinois girl spends one winter in California and there's. There's no going back. There's just no going back. It's fabulous out here and it's very agricultural. And nobody knows that in Illinois you would swear that everybody has a surfboard, you know, that they're blonde and they live on the beach. I mean, that's kind of what the reputation is. I had no idea that there would be, you know, so much agriculture here. And it's so diverse with, you know, 400 different crops that are grown here and all the different ecosystems from Northern California to the Central Valley down to Southern California. And it's all beautiful. It's just very, you know, different. So different, you know, methods, different cropping systems, different water availability, dry land versus, you know, irrigated systems. We've got perennial cropping systems with all types of trees. And then the rangeland, you can't forget the rangeland. What is there, 41% of the land mass here is in grazing lands that can't be farmed. So that the grazing aspects of what we do in agriculture in California are really critical and can definitely play a role in addressing climate. There's no doubt in my mind that that could really be a thing if we really got busy and started transitioning into a more regenerative grazing type System. So, long story. I came out to California, didn't go home and finished up my graduate work and I started working for UC and then ended up doing a PhD and then I ended up taking a position at Cal State. They did a program where they would pay for my education at the University of California if I came back and did some teaching at the CSUs. It was a forgiveness loan program and so I took advantage of that and they hired me before my PhD was complete and I jumped into that and never looked back. In 2006, as you know, in California there's a huge transition in the dairy industry, right. It's get big or get out. You know, we have got some of the mega dairies, not as big as some of them now in Texas and so on, but we've got mega dairies and we're losing all of our, you know, small family dairies there. I mean you can't go. I joke about the fact that I go back home, I get off the plane and Chicago and by the time I get to my folks farm in Sublette, illinois, I counted 25 dead dairies just through that drive. So you know, that's the transition in the dairy industry and everybody is aware of that. We've just lost a lot of dairies and we continue to lose dairies, right? Yeah. So in 2006, you know, the big shift we thought for small dairies was going into the organic production system. And so that looked like the perfect solution for our university farm because our dairy was losing money left and right trying to be a conventional dairy, you know, 80 cows. Ridiculous thought. Just a huge money sink. And it was not the best. You know, we had cows in mud and it just, it just the optics on that were terrible. And you know, we're very public, we have a lot of folks coming. You know, we have 10, 15, 15,000 people visit that university farm on an annual basis and for them to see cows in mud was just the really bad thing to do. So they, I think in a moment of weakness gave me the reins on renovating. So what are you going to do with that dairy program? It's the biggest dairy state in the country. We're not going to not have a dairy program. Right. So that's when I went out and started doing some research and I met Rosie and Ward Burroughs and I know you know them both and they're dear friends of mine and you know, they at that point in time they had, you know, two thriving organic dairy, pasture based dairy. They really walked the talk. And I just have A lot of respect for the, the way in which, you know, they dairied. So working together with them and a whole host of other organic valley farmers in the state of California, California, we pulled together a transition at the university farm and we created, you know, the first organic dairy, pasture based dairy at a university, you know, west of what I guess would be of, you know, the program that was going on in New Hampshire. You know, New Hampshire had a, had a small program going and, and we were able to pull it off with the help of our farmers. They were fantastic. They actually started a campaign called Send a cow to College and donated, you know, heifers. And so we did have, you know, heifers that we transitioned. I did locate a population of heifers that, you know, were native to that region, which I think is really critical. And we transitioned them into. And we started selling organic milk in 2006. And that program has been growing and thriving. And we have a of lot wonderful dairy manager right now who's, you know, completely taken the reins on that. And she manages that together with a group of students. She hires, you know, 10 students every year to help her do all aspects of that dairy. So it's become a wonderful learning platform. Students understand the importance of soil, pasture, grazing, and we've done a lot of great research. But ultimately it became really obvious that, you know, we need to demonstrate this on a much larger scale. What about the rest of all of agriculture? Organic is such a small percentage and it really wasn't a huge component of the dairy industry in California. How is it that we can really promote this ecological approach to farming on a mass scale? And that's where Tim lasalle happened to just come back into California. At that stage he was working for the Howard Buffett foundation in Africa. And then anyway, we ended up connecting really through Rosie. As you know, Rosie's a very wonderful networker. She likes to put interesting people together. And so Tim LaSalle and I, you know, had a conversation about starting the center for Regenerative Agriculture. And together with Rose, Rosie and Ward, you know, we pulled together some people and we created the center for Regenerative Agriculture. It's really the first at any university. Not that, but, you know, we're way behind the industry. You know, the industry had been going into regenerative ag long before, but this is our, what I consider to be our responsibility at the university to be trying to keep up with what's going on in the industry. You know, that's what we really need to be teaching. That's what we need to be teaching all of these young people that want to get into agriculture that there is a bright future, that it isn't all about chemicals. And you know, you have to have, you know, a PCA on hand to apply this spray because you've got this bug. It can be so different. And that's what we want to bring into the curriculum. So it's taken us five years to get to the point where we have created a new option in the plant and soil science degree. It's an option in regenerative agriculture. So students will now be able to get a four year degree. And we hope to make that available in the fall of 2020. And we had to completely, you know, redo the plant and soil science curriculum. And I have a great faculty that the plant and soil science faculty are very open to this. They really get the fact that, you know, this ecological ag is the way forward. That is the future of agriculture. We need to embrace that. And anyway, we were able to get that done. We created seven new courses that are phenomenal. We just got those through the curriculum committee and it goes on to the academic senate, the agenda in January so that we can get that into the catalog. And then we're going to start recruiting students. And my goal is to get a whole host of farmers that are really, you know, willing to intern these kids so that they understand and they get immersed in a regenerative farming paradigm so that they really understand how those systems function. So we're hoping that we can kind of create the next generation of regenerative ag farmers in the industry.

This is exciting progress. This is exciting progress. Cindy, I had no idea that you were working on this. You know, I get asked the question probably a couple times a week at least. Young people reaching out to me and wanting to know where they can learn more about regenerative agriculture. They want a future career in regenerative agriculture. Where can they go to learn? And some of them are coming from an agricultural background, some of them are not. There are varying, varying degrees of being informed, but I think there's a tremendous appetite and there, there haven't been a lot of opportunities historically. So I don't know. Are there any other people that are offering degrees to the degree that you are?

You know, there are sustainable ag degree programs out there, but they haven't necessarily been taking off per se. I don't know of any at the moment. And I really feel like I'm being self serving here by saying so, but I don't think so, not yet. But boy, oh, Southern Cross in Australia. They have a hell of a program and really a well developed one that's been underway now for several years. So that program I think is one to model. They have a number of farmers, fully engaged farmers, not only on the teaching staff, but also on the advisory board. And that is our goal as well. And John, I know how busy you are, but we would love to have you involved more in that way. And our goal with that is to kind of really embellish our leadership council with farmers that are very experienced so that they can kind of keep us going down this path and say, yeah, well, you know, that's probably not as important as doing this. So, you know, the curriculum we've got, you know, the syllabi developed and that it would be awesome to have, you know, experts, our expert farming leadership council evaluate that and say, well, you're missing it here. We do want to set up a network, regenerative Ag Farm demonstration network, where we have internship opportunities so that the students actually as a part of the degree, have to do a six month internship on a farm in some way, shape or form. Because that's the practical aspects of things that are just really bring all that theory to life. We do have a lot of opportunity, we have a lot of case studies, we have a lot of video footage of growers. If you go to our website, it's become quite encyclopedic and we have a entire landing page devoted to mentor farmers and what they do. And so it's been probably the most popular aspect of that entire website is to look at those mentor farmer case studies.

And for our listeners, where is that website?

It's csuchico. Edu Regenerative Ag. But if you just do Cal State Regenerative Ag, you'll come up with that in the search engine.

All right, thank you. We started this conversation by talking about people within academia, the challenges of single factor analysis research. We spoke about the paradigm of being gatekeepers versus being innovators. One of the things that I'm intrigued by when we think about education and we think about the research that needs to be done is these case studies, these examples of farms who are getting results that defy what should be theoretically possible. The way that we understand soil science currently. What is the potential? Where's the opportunity? What's your perspective on the ability to evaluate those systems and learn from those systems?

Well, to me, that's where the goal is. If you really want to make groundbreaking publications, you go where that kind of thing is happening. So that's why I think farms across the country, Rick Clark, Gabe Brown, your, the Burrows. I just think we have a lot of opportunity to really understand how these systems function if we go to where they have very mature regenerative AG systems in place. I mean, we're studying transition because, you know, we're interested in seeing how that soil changes over time. And it's, it's pretty systematic, you know, based on our four locations where we're seeing a change. You know, first in the biology, the biology shifts and then the soil tilt and the porosity and the aggregate stability and the bulk density and then we start to see some carbon changes. You know, so the different fractions of the carbon pool start to shift. You know, so there is that transition that takes place. But you know, what about a mature system, you know, that's already functioning the way that we would want it to function? Like. Danny Unruh is a walnut grower in Princeton and he has been using a multi species cover and other types of things to transition his walnuts. And you know, his input costs have significantly reduced because his soil biology is doing that job rather than having to bring everything to the system. So they're out there and John, I think the universities, extension included, you know, need to put egos aside and say, wow, we need to go in and study that and figure out why it's working, what aspects of that that really have changed because of the change in management and then how can we replicate that in other places? So yeah, yeah, I think that those are the places to study and you know, we need to go there with an interdisciplinary team of scientists working together with the grower. Not change a thing that they're doing because what they're doing is working and figure out why it's working, working. Let's figure out all of those kinds of things. And you know, independently we do have, you know, research that shows, you know, the benefits of no till and the benefits of multi species cover and the benefits of compost. So it's there, but you have to connect all those dots and what's missing in the literature is a study of a whole system, whole system contrasts of how, how a truly regenerative pasture system functions, you know, as, as opposed to, you know, something where they're, you know, pouring nitrogen to it and they got a mono crop of rye grass or something along those. So those are the kinds of things that I think provide a wealth of discovery that could be done if, if people were curious in that way. Unfortunately, some of these places, you know, are remote. Like, you know, we have to go to Wilcox, Arizona, and people say, what the heck are you doing that for? Well, that's because that's, that's where the opportunity is. You know, that's. That's where that is. And Blythe that. Because that's where Dale Tyson is and he's our window into this transition in this particular region, in this hay teff wheat rotation. So we go where the opportunities are. And that is something that most entities are just not willing to do because it is, it's expensive. And, you know, we're fortunate to have donors and funding that allows us to do that. And so we've been able to take advantage of some of those opportunities.

Yeah, I think when you're describing doing whole systems research and the synergistic effects of combining different practices together, I've always been puzzled by the wide discrepancies that were reported in the literature of how plants are performing differently and behaving differently physiologically in different environments. So you might have a study of carbon deposition and one study will report carbon deposition of 5% of total plant photosynthesis and another will be 75% without any associated explanation of why the wide variation. And recently I read an unpublished paper that was titled when the Symbiont changes the host. Or maybe it was how the Symbiont changes the host. It was essentially a description of how, when. Of a set of mechanisms. When you have plants that are colonized by biology, when they have a functional microbiome, how that changes plant physiological expression. And it changes plant physiological expression in some very fundamental ways. Dramatically increases photosynthesis, dramatically increases carbon sequestration. Just a long list of rather fundamental changes. It even changes how the stomata on the bottom side of a leaf behave. Instead of taking minutes to open or close, and now it can open and close in seconds.

It's just right.

These remarkable physiological changes in plants where I think as we learn more about the microbiome, we're recognizing that we can't reasonably disassociate an organism from its beneficial microbiome that is associated with, if we want to understand how it really is designed and intended to function, whether that is our microbiome or the microbiome of an insect or the microbiome of a plant. We need to look at those as integrated as a whole. And when you consider all of our research, or I shouldn't say all of it, but the great majority of our research, kind of our foundational research about how plants behave and fundamental plant physiology is all based on sterile laboratory Environment research.

That's right. It's been devastating, right? You know, it's. It's definitely been devastating. So, you know, if research sets policy, I guess that's why our policy is what it is today, because our research has not really addressed, you know, the, the whole systems approach. And I love what you're saying about that. There's so much that we don't understand about those relationships between the system, soil microbiome and plant and plant physiology. I mean, I'm just so intrigued by some of that work that's been done where, you know, it's the relationship. I mean, they become one. I mean, they become part of, you know, a highly functioning organism, you know, very similar to our cells and tissues and organs. I mean, it's not, it's not unlike that scenario. And what we've managed to do in agriculture is we tried to manage it and, you know, we're going to, we're going to manage this system. And because, you know, our science, you know, is so good that we definitely, you know, know better than, than Mother Nature, this is, it's an intriguing area and we need to know more about that. And, you know, that's the great. The frontier is the, the synergies between the plant and the soil microbiome and how well that functions when you have a fully charged soil microbiome. I don't know too many farming systems on the planet where, you know, that has been taken to the. To the ultimate. You know, there are a few places around that have done that, but they're not yet well studied. So, you know, the work that Dr. White had been doing, you know, is kind of the closest. Are there other teams addressing that? I'm not aware.

Not that I'm aware of. There are a lot of people doing very innovative research, but the best. I don't know if I should say the best research because there's good research coming from many places, but there's a lot of really great research that is actually being conducted by farmers just doing experiments and doing and trying things. And that is foundational. That's necessary. Also, farmers are constrained. Farmers are constrained by resources, time, equipment, just the capacity to get things done. And I see there is this gap where many of us, we struggle to develop a clear image in our mind of what the possibilities are of what is really possible. If we had an optimal ecosystem, if we had optimal plant function, optimal soil function, what would that actually look like in our ecosystem? Few of us, we don't have the context or the knowledge base to imagine what that Might be, it's. I'm persuaded that we commonly fail to dream big enough. What we find most intimidating is not that we might be wrong or that we might fail, but that the possibility exists for us to be successful beyond our wildest dreams.

That's an interesting take on that. I often think we're limited by our own imaginations. I think that's absolutely true. And that couldn't be more applicable to research. We are not getting there. Yeah. So what you're saying is that have we really achieved that? Even very mature systems, John, do you feel like those plants are functioning optimally when they've got a fully diverse, fully functioning soil? I think that that point in time they should be fully allowed to express their genetic potential. Because up until now, you know, we may have the most powerful genetics on the planet, but they are unrealized because we've not provided them the proper environment. And that includes those, you know, those cues, all of those, those microbial, fungal cues that are there, that are undiscovered. And because we don't understand it, we don't facilitate it, we don't support it or try to create that scenario again. Yeah, limited. We're limited.

If we approach agronomy and plant growing, plants in soil, from a biology first perspective, from a biological centric perspective, then that means in every time you open an agronomy journal or a. You read an article on plant nutrition or a book on plant physiology, there's always this obligatory introductory paragraph or chapter on how plants absorb and transport nutrient ions. And when you consider the work of Dr. White and the work of Gerald Pollack, all of a sudden, all of those, all of that work needs to be revisited, needs to be rewritten, because we now know that it is perhaps not entirely incorrect, but it is most certainly incomplete. And we need to include this biological component. And this is what needs to be taught to students, but it is also what needs to be implemented in the field on a. On a large scale, fairly quickly.

Absolutely true. Yeah. Everything that we're teaching in soil and, you know, in plant physiology, plant nutrition, it's all dated, it's all outdated. You would be hard pressed to find a course in soil microbiology in any ag program, you know, so that to me needs to change. And, you know, plant physiology can't be taught without soil microbiology. So, you know, we got to start somewhere, John. We have to start somewhere. So we do have a course that is called regenerative Soil Health Management that is taking into consideration, you know, the plant availability, the plant combinations. But More so it's really going to focus in on the effects of farming management strategies between the regenerative, all the different farming systems and what effect that that has on the soil microbiome. And then obviously that leads to, you know, what, what that does, how that facilitates plant performance and plant physiology. Yeah, I think that is the bleeding edge. So, you know, we need to focus a lot of energy right there. You know, how is it that we can optimize the soil microbiome to optimize plant productivity and plant function? Because I will tell you that we're also tracking some nutrient density stuff. Not to, you know, steal Dan Kittredge's platform, but yeah, you know, there are some changes there and you know, we see that more so in the mature systems than we do in the transitioning systems. And I guess that stands to reason. There's probably logic there that we're not quite there yet. But you know, as that biome continues to diversify and we build that biomass and the diversity there that it, it does change, you know, the, some of the antioxidant and some of the compounds. I mean, we look at big, broad classes, you know, just at, you know, total antioxidant and total polyphenol. Whereas, you know, folks at Utah State are taking that into much more detail using that mass spec. And you know, that's an amazing piece of equipment that can tell us a lot about the different families. And so we've been sending paired samples to step on Von Fleet there at Utah State, he has a mass spec that is really super and he has, you know, folks that know how to run it. That's the kind of machine, you know, that has to run 247 and you need, you know, technicians to be managing that in order to crank out the data in the way that you need to do that. So he's the perfect partner to really understand how the nutrient density shifts in these crops coming off these paired sites. So he just recently finished up some wheat and you know, that was in a transitional two year study. So that was only two years of regenerative practice and then we grew some wheat. And there are already some shifts there in some of the antioxidant components. And we're just diving into that data now. It's going to be very exciting, I think, to see it. And we do have friends at Purina that are also interested in this and Megafood and others that are interested in the nutrient density. So I think as time goes on with this study, as we continue to build that soil microbiome we'll see bigger shifts. And so we have some rice, we have corn, we have alfalfa, we have wheat. We want to move into some other types of crops that we can get some, you know, real contrasting data from. So that's another area that is just really ready to blossom is this whole issue of nutrient density coming off of these regenerative type systems where the biology is really humming.

I'm really excited by the promise of this nutritional integrity, nutrient density translating to having a legitimate conversation about food as medicine. And of course, the, the hope here is to have farmers be able to be compensated for producing quality. And I think that needs to translate from more than just a hope into a reality relatively soon because we do have growers that are there that are producing these premium quality food products.

No, that would be fabulous. I would love to be able to see that. And I don't know exactly how you bring that forward other than getting some of these brands excited about that and then paying for that premium. I mean, that's where I haven't necessarily seen where these companies are coming forward with premiums. So I'm hopeful.

Yeah, certainly the retailers and the CPG companies are, they're not at the front of the line at this point. Consider the history of the last half a dozen decades, the decline in farmers, the decline in the farming population and the work that you're currently engaged in. Where do you see the opportunity for people, both in academia and farmers? Where are the significant areas of opportunity that people are not taking advantage of?

Well, I think this whole paradigm in regenerative ag is an opportunity for young people, especially those that haven't necessarily been cultured in the traditional agricultural kinds of concepts. Because we all recognize that some of the biggest challenges towards transition, you know, from the traditional conventional into the regenerative is what's going on, you know, in their head. You know, they, they've had decades of programming. They, you know, they have, you know, their university training. If they, you know, went to college before they went back to the farm and you know, that's, it's how, you know, dad did it. So I think ultimately that's going to be a big component. So I do see opportunity for young people coming in that may not necessarily have that conditioning. They come in with an open of not unlike Gabe Brown. Gabe wasn't born to it. He came into it by marriage and so didn't hold some of those old beliefs and.