Episode 157: Farmers of Life, for Life with Grant Breitkreutz

Hi, friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. You know the types of conversations that we have here, and if you don't, they're all about regenerating soil health, ecosystem health, the health of the plants and the livestock, the crops that we're growing, and ultimately having an impact on people's health and on public health. These are all important pieces that are integrally tied together. I'm very honored to have a conversation today with Grant Breitkreuz. Grant is someone whose work I've admired from a distance for a long time. I really enjoy the conversations that I have here on the podcast with scientists and with innovators. We have lots of fun conversations, but ultimately, where the rubber really meets the road is in practice and having conversations with growers through putting things into practice. And there is no replacement for depth of experience, which Grant and his family and the people that he works with bring to the table in spades. So, Grant, thank you for being here. I really looking forward to this conversation.

Great honor and a pleasure to be here.

John, can you tell us a little bit about your story, your background? What is. What's your farming context? What does your operation look like? And how did you get to where you are today?

I. Our farming operation started in 1997. It's kind of unique story. My mom and dad, when they got married, they. They made a commitment to each other. At age 50, they would decide if they had made it farming or reassess life, reevalu life in general. And to my amazement, at age 50, they. Their decision was to quit farming. And I mean quit that. My dad bought a truck, went coast to coast for a while. My mom had a job in town and gave Don and I the opportunity to buy them out and start farming here. So at that time, we were. It was quite the step. You know, in farms, you don't realize how you lean on older generations to help you with decisions. And when my dad was gone and he didn't have a cell phone, just. There was nobody to back us up. So we made the decisions on our own. And. And honestly, it was a blessing, John. It. It. My wife was not from a farm. Dawn's not from a farm. When I met her, she didn't know how to run a riding lawnmower. And she constantly asked, why? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? You know, she'd get done work in a field, and I'd say, well, it looks pretty good. Let's work it again. And she's like, why you Know you're going to get seed to soil contact here. So that really kept me questioning things and. And obviously we were doing things what I would call the very conventional way in our neighborhood. It's what I was taught, what I learned. And eventually it wasn't working financially and we were both working jobs off the farm. And it's like we got to make this farm more profitable and try to get here full time. And so we both really enjoyed the cattle side of it and just love the cow calf operation, the feedlot at the time. And so I started studying grazing management. Was blessed to meet Ian Mitchell Ennis, in from South Africa. And even after meeting Ian, I didn't realize it was about soil health. We were still chasing production, production, production. And eventually the good Lord tapped us on the head and said it was about soil health.

And so then we was relatively soft.

Yeah, well, sometimes it was kind of harsh, but. And then, and then, you know, at that time, you just couldn't find information like you can now on. On media streams and all that type of stuff. And there weren't conferences locally, so we, we spent. Every winter we would run up to Burley County, North Dakota to see what Jay Fear and the crew was doing at the Menokin farm to their annual conference and learned a lot from that and experimented a lot here on the farm and eventually our practices here on the farm with what I would call regenerative agriculture, more like farming for life, open the doors to a lot of land opportunities. A lot of land owners saw what we were doing on our farm, saw the wildlife coming back, saw the reduced erosion, in reality, saw the life on the farm and started studying soil health and what it is and what it means. And we made a humongous expansion here. We quadrupled the size of this farm in less than three years and.

Wow.

And at the same time had the opportunity to expand it a lot more than that. But we just knew the workload was going to be too much. And so I was blessed to know enough people in the community that we got a lot of young farmers to take on the land that was offered to us and farm it the way we do or close to what we do.

Wow, that's a fascinating story, Grant. So how, as you, as you traveled to North Dakota, to Burley county, to those events, how did your. How did your operation shift and change? How is it different today from what it was in the 90s?

We were a full tillage operation in the 90s we did buy our first no till drill and we still have it in 1998 because if I remember right, the ground froze early that year. We didn't get tillage done. And so we've been no tilling soybeans since 1998. And it's like, wow, we're just not burning all that fuel. The crops are good. Let's figure out how to no till everything else. And, and so corn was the last crop. We switched to no till about 12 or 13 years ago. Our operation, we actually were cover cropping before it was called cover crops. Like I said earlier, we were so, so enthralled with our cattle and enjoyed the cattle side of it so much with, and with the limited land base we had, we're trying to expand the cowherd and couldn't ever get enough feed put up or enough grazing days. And so we were planting winter tritical after we cut corn silage and try to grow three crops in two years. And we got into extremely wet pattern. I'd have, I'd have to go back and look at what year it was, but it was, it was in the late 90s or early 2000s and we had had 2 inches of rain throughout the night. The tritical was getting so tall it wasn't getting through our older cutting equipment. And I told Dawn, I said, as soon as you get done with work, I said, you got to get on the swather and get this laid down or we're never going to get it harvested. And she got home early that day and went out there and never left the track. And I'm like, wait a minute, something happened here. Something is different with this soil. And you know, six hours later we were running with the cutters behind her pulling big silage boxes and we never left the track.

Wow.

And it's, it's like what happened here? And then I thought, you know, we just had two inches of rain. This might be crazy, but we own this no till drill with a neighbor and he doesn't like to sleep at night. Let's put beans in that drill and plant these beans tonight yet, you know. And this is within 24 hours of a 2 inch rain and harvested 46 bushel acre soybeans. And so the combination of learning what we learned on the grazing side of it and then that particular experience was like, there's something going on below our feet. We need to figure this out and we need to try to manage it better than we currently are. So that's, that's kind of how our evolution was. And, and, and since then, obviously our operation grows more than Just corn and soy and, and crops for cattle.

What all are you growing today?

We're still primarily corn and soybeans. And I will admit that's because we still borrow a lot of money here and we go out to keep our crop insurance. That's part of that. But we do. Dawn and I decide how many acres each year we want to leverage without insurance, on which most times is a very good decision. So we do grow a bunch of cereal, rye here. We do grow some winter trit. We've done some field peas. We grow right now. I've been working on it for seven years. I grow seven grains all at one time. We plant wheat, oats, barley, peas, faba beans, lentils and flax all at the same time. And we use the same percentage each year and harvested as dry grain. And this has turned into another huge market for us for chicken feed. We grind and mix chicken feed here. And I think right now we've got 26 customers. I know we've got a couple of customers on the waiting list because like I say, last year we were wet and part of our field drowned out, so we didn't have any extra production.

So, so what is the. Why are the chicken producers attracted to that mix? Are they particularly looking for the flax component, the omega 3 to 6 ratio, nutrient density, or. They're just. It's an, it's an inexpensive and effective feed source for them. Are they looking for quality or what? What are the motivators?

That's exactly what happened two years ago in March in this upper Midwest region. And I, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but something happened to the local flocks, small flocks that were buying out of our Fleet Farm stores where the chickens quit laying eggs. And we had a couple landlords that we were providing feed to for their layer flocks. And they had a network and they just said, well, Grant and Dawn's feed, our. Our chickens haven't missed a beat laying eggs. Maybe you should call them. And my phone just exploded. I mean, we went from supplying two landlords chicken feed, all of a sudden we were to 15 to 16 customers. And what we're seeing is we've got some customers that don't want soy. And that's what, that's what pushed us to this for a while. We had excess eggs and we had a customer that would buy our eggs as long as they did not contain soy. So that's why I put together this seven way blend. And now most of the customers that are new to us now will say that our Feed, they get consistent egg lay rates. I mean, we've got a small producer locally here that I think he's got about 18 to 20 some birds. And they said that one day they'd harvest seven eggs, the next day they'd have all 18. And since being on our feed now for six months, they're consistently pulling 15 to 18 eggs a day. I mean you, you can call it the weather, you can call it whatever else, but that, that producer will say it's the consistency of the feed. And we don't add anything to this except for an organic vitamin pack. We, I still believe in that. I don't know if we could get by without it. And apple cider vinegar. Yep.

Yeah, that's interesting. So what does, what does this mix do for you agronomically? I mean, if you're growing a seven way grain mix all in one combination, I'm assuming you're planting that in the spring and then harvesting later that year.

Yeah. So. Yep. So it's, it's going in early like our wheat or oats would here. We plant it early basically when we're thawed out here and can get through the fields and then we can harvest usually the end of July. So besides the diversity in the seven grain mix, it gives us a great opportunity to put in a 15, 18 species cover crop mix and still get a lot of growing days here in Minnesota. I mean we, you know, we can potentially freeze the second week of September, but that this way we get a lot of growth and we can produce a lot of forage for winter grazing. And if we don't get to it, don't need it for winter grazing, just, just do a tremendous amount of healing and building of soils with that type of length. And to be honest with you, John, I, I'll admit it, this has turned out to be one of our better cash crops.

Good.

What we're charging for the feed is acceptable to the customer and it's a very good profit per acre situation.

What role do livestock play in your operation?

Presently we've learned that livestock are key to our operation to build soil health. Besides that, the livestock is key for diversity. We just, we realize that diversity is key to fixing soils. We can't scientifically prove this, but I know when we pick up a new piece of ground that if we're given the good weather conditions, good growing environments that we can, we can speed up soil health metrics by about 2 years by walking the cows across it. Wow, there's, there's something that drops out of the Back end of that cow that can't be duplicated in a lab, no way, no how. I mean, you, you watch a cow as she's walking across the land and the right sunlight, there's just a hue of biology life around that cow besides what's going in that great big fermentation vat inside of her. And that just stimulates the biology in the soil so much quicker than, than any of the other products we can find that can do it. So we, we, we row crop about 1200 acres here and our goal is to have those cows across every acre every other year. And we're doing really good at it. We've got one farm that we don't have fenced yet, but that's on the list to get done because we know how important getting those cows across that land is.

When you think about the last 20, 30 years of experience, as, as you've learned from people, you're, you were one of the pioneers, so you had to, you learned a lot from people that were outside of your region. And one of the things that we talk about constantly is the need to adapt that knowledge to your local context. What is it that you've, what were the adaptations that were required for you? What have you adapted? What's something that you learned that then had to be revised in order to fit?

Oh, just about everything I learned out of my region. I was one of these go big or go home type producers in the 90s. And it really hurt us because I didn't, I didn't think about the adaptation process of how it was going to work in Minnesota. Something I was learning in North Dakota or in Arkansas. So what, what we did learn and what I do encourage producers to do is try it in your environment with what you think is the right adapted practices and try it on a small scale. Don't go big and go home because it hurts the pocketbook. We as farmers need to try all these practices on our own operations. And I've said this forever. We can have a list of parameters or regulations from the government or whatever. No, no two farms are ever going to look the same. We all have different management systems, we all have different environments, and we all react to those environments and changes differently as producers. So what we do now is, you know, like the seven grains. I just tried it on 10 acres and it's like, wow, tremendous results. Now we're growing a lot of acres of it because we, we know it works here and it fits here. Just those type of things. Start small, but start, I mean, for Anybody that listens to this, that thinks they want to go down this path, the one thing dawn and I will tell everybody is we regret not finding this path earlier. I mean, we were blessed to know David Brandt and to, to watch the experience of that man starting this, this in the 70s and to see what he built there in those soils. You know, I just, I just wish we'd have started right away when we started farming. But that's, that's everybody's experience. We got to get to it in our own time frame.

When, when you are learning and when you're adapting things to your local context, you know, learning is never non linear. It's from an outside observer, it looks like a straight path from point A to point B, but for the people who are doing it, they know it's all kinds of twists and turns on that, that supposedly straight pathway. So what are, what are some of the things that you've learned? What are some of the things that you would do differently if you were starting over?

What are some of the things I would do differently if I was starting over? I would do more and more research. Even back at the time we did, I wish we'd have spent more time traveling to find more research so we had more confidence in what we were doing. And the other thing that I would, that, that Don and I talk about a lot is Grant and John can tell you to do one thing, find three other people, at least two other people that are saying the same thing that Grant and John are saying. So you got the validation that there are other people that have experienced this, know it works, and you're on the right path. I think, I think that would be one of the biggest things I would have changed, is to just make sure I had more than one source telling me this was the path to go down.

Hmm, that's interesting. I just, I think about that in my own life a little bit. And I don't think anyone would suggest, nor would I suggest that I haven't done enough research, because that's one thing that I tend to really thrive at. But, you know, I don't know. Thinking about your second point a little bit, there are many cases where the pioneers have no peers like there. If you really are on the cutting edge, you're doing things that you may not be able to find two or three other people who have had similar experiences. How do you approach that?

Well, on our operation here, if we couldn't find anybody with experience on that is, we tried it two or three or four years in a row. To see if our thought process, our. Our ideas were going to work. And I would say nine times out of 10, that did. But you got to realize we're in agriculture and we're. Mother nature controls what we do out here. We can do everything we can to make something succeed, or as human beings, we can make anything fail also. But mother nature is still in control. So when we try something, we want to try it at least three to four years to make sure that we're correct. And then we'll expand on it. I mean, some things are just a given. Yeah, just go ahead and do it. But like this seven grains. I mean, we slowly expanded it. I mean, in our. In our livestock operation, you know what stocking rates are right, what, what are wrong. We've learned there's no correct stocking rate. There's lots of people out there that can tell you what they think is right, and it's not. It's all our management decisions. But the one key thing is, is I'm not tech savvy. I know I could do all this on my phone, but we still do it. All on paper is we record everything, especially on the livestock side of it. Hey, did we over graze this? What was the weather conditions when we overgrazed it? And, and now with all that information back there, we can tell you this year and next year where the most productive pastures are going to be by our past history. And that's something that takes a long time to get your head wrapped around. We had a group of producers here the other day, and they said, what, how come. How come this pasture's got dandelions in it and how come this one doesn't? And I said, I can tell you straight out. I said, we can go up to the office, look in the books, and I can tell you that that was overgrazed sometime in the last two years. You know, it was a sacrifice paddock. There was a reason that it was overgrazed, and, and overgrazing happens. And it. And it does in our environment because it's something we have to do to keep these cows out of the feedlot. But we, but we've got that written down and we know it. So we got to give it longer rest and recovery periods. I mean, it. I guess it all comes back to, I've got a great memory of things. But if we don't have that type of memory locked in our head, we have to get it on paper or some kind of recorded device to know the history of what happened there. And that will predict the future.

I remember. Don't remember where this quote originated, but it was at a fairly young age. It might have been with my mother. She repeated it quite frequently, if I recall correctly. The poorest ink is better than the best memory.

Exactly. Because the ink doesn't lie. The ink can always be referenced back to. Yep.

Yep.

So when there's this recurring conversation that I often have with growers who are, who want to go down a different pathway and who want to. And there's this common request is what are the most influential changes that I can make? Where are the leverage points that can have the most significant impact on improving an operation? I think there are, there are a few pieces that are getting to be very commonly recognized. The impact of COVID crops and where possible, the impact of livestock. But I'd like to ask that question of you for, for your operation. When you look at the modifications, the changes you've made over time, where were the leverage points where a change produced an outsized impact that was larger than you expected?

Well, like I said, we're in corn soybean country here. And I guess the one big thing on corn for me was nitrogen management. It is. Boggles my mind why or how the corn producer in America listens to their input supplier who's taking the money out of their pocket as to how to apply nitrogen. And I was blessed by my father and my grandfather, who I don't think they studied nitrogen management, but they knew that split applications and nitrogen were key to growing a great corn crop on very little nitrogen. And it's just amazing when we change nitrogen management, how we change weed pressures, how we change all these other things that we fight in a growing season. There's so much to that question you asked, John. I just. But that's the one that popped to my mind immediately. That's specific to my area here. But corn's growing all across the country is, as we start changing these managements, it you, like I said before, you have to watch what else changes also. Yeah. So you've said this a lot in your podcast over the years. Is nutrient management is so key and, and it affects everything else in the ecosystem we're, we're farming in and we're trying, where we're trying to grow a crop in. And I guess that's the one that just popped to my mind right away was nitrogen management. I watch what the neighbors do and I watch them fight water hemp non stop. And it's like, you know, the water hemp's one of the least of my concerns. Because of COVID crop and nitrogen management.

Well, you know, Grant, in spite of me being here on the podcast and the amazing work that our team does all the time, we still have. I received a message yesterday from a grower who has been loosely working with our consulting team for the last four years. And he's this year for the first time, he decided, okay, I'm going all in. I'm going to take these recommendations, I'm going to apply them as I'm being advised to. And he sent me this message. He said, okay, I get it. I really get. For the first time, I'm seeing the degree of plant health and response that you've always talked about that I've never gotten up to this point. And it's because he was putting his toe in the water. And there are some things that you just, there are some things that have a compounding effect, and nutrition management is one of them. So let's talk a bit about nitrogen management. What, what are you doing exactly? How is it different? And what, what are the benefits that you've observed relative to the way other the common management practices are?

So I'll answer that question this way, John, is we don't know what we're doing. We honestly don't. We're trying so many different things, but the one thing that Don and I have always done is a minimum of three nitrogen applications on a corn crop. Well, we'll apply some of that plant, we'll spoon feed a little bit at V2, V3, and we'll come in and spoon feed some later. That's how we started out doing this. And, and I have made the decision in the economy, in the economic times we're in this year. We are going to make no less than six applications of nitrogen on the corn crop this year. And dawn is, she's really honestly not happy with me about my decision because she knows I'm going to be living in a sprayer to do all these applications. But when you look at the dollars and cents of it, that is gonna, that's gonna pay my entire year's wages by nitrogen management. I mean, we're melting urea and we're using Humix and Fulvix. I mean, we've realized it's not just about NP and K anymore. And, and I'll be honest with you, John. I, I, I told Russell Hedrick this three years ago, probably four years ago, Russell and I got split apart during COVID and we got back together at a conference and, and we're sitting there eating a steak One night, and I told Russell, I said, man, I, I, I'm really angry with you. I, I hate, I hate you. And he's like, why are you saying that, Grant? We get along great. And I said, because I did not like school. And I said, with everything that you've learned on your farm, with the research you've done there, I have to go back to school, and I don't want to go back to school. And to be honest with you, John, I have made a commitment that I try to spend three to four hours every day through the winter studying anything. And I don't care if it's coming off of your podcast or somebody else's podcast or if I'm looking things up on the computer. I think we in agriculture as farmers, we've become chemologists, and we were pushed that way by Farm Bill, by input, suppliers, everything else. We as farmers have to become biologists again. Our forefathers did not grow just corn and soybeans. They had a rotation. Did they know why they were doing it? Some of them, yes, some of them, no. But it was about the biology happening in the soil by growing different crops. And we've just gone down a really nasty path. And your group is one I go to all the time to listen to and search out knowledge. I mean, there's lots of other paths that people can find this and try to learn it as a farmer and apply it back to their farms.

You know, many professions, well, I'd say practically everyone benefits from having advisors. And so farmers have for a long time thought of co op agronomists as being on their team. They're on their, they're one of their advisors that are on their team, like their vet and other advisors. But, you know, I think, I don't know if farming is unique in this, but one of the things that stands out to me is that we, in no other profession that I'm aware of, do people delegate knowledge to their advisors to the same degree that farmers do or have done in the recent past. Maybe the farmers that I observed, the one characteristic that I've observed, are the most successful farms, the most innovative, the growers who are exceptionally profitable and who are really making. They do not delegate knowledge. And what I mean by that is they want to understand it for themselves. So they certainly they have advisors, they have people that they're learning from. But then they say, hang on, I'm not just going to follow your Recommendations Just because Mr. Genius Smart Guy said so. I want to understand why did he make that recommendation why are we doing this now? And farmers for a long time have delegated the understanding of the why or have been satisfied with superficial answers.

I agree 100% with what you just said, John. And I had to do some research on this on a presentation I gave some years ago. Why do we as producers and why? I guess the research I did as ag producers, 85 to 90% of our input decisions are based on the co op that's taken the money out of our product, out of our pocket. Why that, that just when you say this to somebody outside of agriculture, they're like, why would you listen to somebody that's taking the money out of your pocket? And, and the one was free. It was the advice. And we, we still have to get product from our local co ops. And I, I go in there and I say, I want, you know, 5, 000 pounds of urea in each hopper, dump it in these two tanks. And they're like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm melting urea. And the head agronomist just gives you a blank look. Our, our, our co ops maybe don't have the knowledge that we think we trust they have as producers. Yeah, and to me, to me, that's, to me, that's extremely disappointing. But that's where we as American farmer got to take this back into our hand. Just like you, we, we have to have the knowledge. We have to find John and his advisory team or other advisory teams that, that have this knowledge. And the one thing that I wanted to say in this podcast so far, John, is the farther and farther I go down this road, the less and less I know. And it's scary the less and less I know. But yet I can see the, I can see everything changing for the better, from our bottom line to the environment to our neighborhood and community. And I don't think we're ever going to get to a point in time where we as human beings understand what God gave us here. Yes, I understand the amount of studying you do, John, but you're still learning every day.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

And I don't know as a human race that we'll ever figure out what God gave us here to manage, but the closer we can manage it to the way it was before we got here to me and dawn, the easier the system works. And it's much more fun to manage in that environment instead of looking every morning at what we got to go out and kill and take care of. Managing for life. And what we can grow is so much more fun. It put fun back into farming.

Yeah, you know, you're. I think you're spot on about the, Your assessment of we're never going to know everything there is to know. None of us ever is AI Never is there. There is. It's just not. That's not the way it's going to work. However, I'm also really inspired by the idea that it's not really necessary to know everything because it was designed to work. It was designed to work. And when you can, when you understand the foundational principles of working with life as you described it and you seek to enhance life rather than to kill it, then you unleash it. You allow it to express itself rather than constantly suppressing it. And then amazing things begin to happen. And you, you mentioned something a bit ago on nitrogen management related to weed pressure. You know, often as we go down this pathway, we observe things that, oh, dandelion pressure is a result or dandelion expression is a result of overgrazing. Weed pressure is a result of nitrogen management. And we make these associations that we, we made change. A, and we observed all these various outcomes. B, C, D, E, F. And as time goes by and we gain experience and we have the benefit of deeper perspective, all of a sudden we get to a point where, oh, I did this, and it had this domino effect. And five years later that happened. And that just blows people's minds who are unfamiliar with this. It's like you're saying that, but that's. So Z is so far removed from A. How can you say A caused Z? But if you've watched that pattern repeat itself multiple times, like, no, no, those two things are connected. And that's, that's, that's an incredible experience.

It is absolutely incredible experience. And, and I'll admit this on, on my farming operation, when dawn and I started, there was a new agronomist that must have paid attention to soils class in college. And I said, I said, I want to do a full soil testing program. I said, I want to do things right. And he looked at me and he said, are the cows leaving the farm anytime soon, Grant? And I said, nope. He said, don't bother. Soil testing just floored me. This is an agronomist that told me this, don't bother soil testing. So on our operation, I feel horrible about this. We've got no real baselines. We do have some soil tests here from 1996 or 1998, I believe that's the only soil test I have from back when we started. So I mentored A producer up the river here from me. And I told him, I said, phil, I said, you have got to baseline everything. All the tests that are out there right now, please baseline this. You don't have livestock. You're a corn, soybean producer. So your data is going to be key to what happens here. And that data set, John, is just amazing. Seven years into it, organic matter climb is just constant. All the other parameters that we know how to measure now are all there and all documented. Something I can't show on my farm because we didn't do it. But now on these new farms that we're, that we're taking on, we're baselining everything and then monitoring the increase in everything. Like you say, other than the test, there's so much more that we got to monitor visually as farmers. Just look at, just look at what happens to the wildlife in the neighborhood as you make these changes. And every producer I've ever talked to that's five to seven years into this will notice those environmental changes also.

Yeah. So I want to talk a bit about some of the farmers and producers that you've been mentoring and the people that you're working with. But sometimes I get a little bit like a dog with a bone. I don't want to lose sight of something. And, and I wanted to come back to your point about nitrogen management and, and weed pressure with your split applications. And you're now doing six applications, you said this summer, so I'm assuming. Well, you did say the sprayer, so that means a lot of foliar applications. What changes in weed pressure have you observed as a result of changing nitrogen management? How do you think those two things correlate?

The biggest one in our area here is, is water hemp and that that species of weed is with, with a growing cover crop, because I need to admit this, we do plant most of our crops into, into green living cover crops. So obviously we get the effect of that rye or try to kill as a cover on the soil. But even, even in areas where we don't get a cover crop seeded, we don't fight the water hemp pressure because of the nutrient applications. And the reason I can say that is because we've been pushed into a corner at times where we had to front load a lot of nitrogen because we knew we weren't going to get it done. We were short on labor, we didn't have the equipment. And in those app, in those situations, we fight water hemp or lamb squirter or pigweed. We fight them. And when we, when we split this up, we don't fight it. And the other thing I'll say, John, is I mentor a lot of people here locally, and in fact, one of them's working for me now. And he farms his own land. And he made the comment to me yesterday. He said, grant, he says, I got a spray. He said, I got water hemp horribly. And yet he's here with me riding in my wheeler, scouting fields here. And he's like, how come you don't have it? And I said, don't you think that 140 pounds of nitrogen applied before you planted might have something to do with it? And he just looked at me and he said, it can't be tied together. I said, it is. I said, it's tied together. And he just kind of gave me a blank look. He says, well, he says, I would not believe you at all, but I'd see it on your farm. And our farms are not that far apart. There's a difference. Yeah.

So what does in an ideal scenario? Well, this year you're now going to kind of another level. But what has your nitrogen split looked like historically? How much at planting versus how much later?

40, 40 units of nitrogen put on with the planter. And then we'll try to get between 60 and 80 more units on in the growing season. We what we found here in our soils that are really functioning well. And I can't prove this scientifically, John, and I, I wish somebody could, but it looks to me like we kind of shoot for six tenths of a unit of nitrogen per bushel. It seems to be ideal. We've done 250plus bushel corn on 4/10 of a unit of nitrogen. It seems to me that we might be burning some organic matter. Then it seems like that crop might be pulling hard on our soils, harder than I'd like to see. So that's, that's kind of our ideal goal is, is six tenths of a unit of nitrogen per bushel of corn. Now, I will say we farm some land along the river here. That's, that's not going to be 250 bushel corn. I mean, maybe someday it will be. So that, that's not our yield goal. So we strive for 175 bushel yield gold here because we knew, we know we have marginal soils. But 250 has happened, you know, but that comes back to the environment. I guess our goal here is we don't have a specialty end market for our corn yet. We grow all conventional corn, non GMO corn. Our goal here as an operation is to produce it as cheap or cheaper than our neighbors. So we are profitable at $4 corn. We don't. We don't have to produce 250 bushel corn to make a profit. If we watch our inputs going in on the front side.

I'd love to open that profitability can of worms, but it's. The reality is anyone who pays attention probably knows what that story looks like, profitability versus yield.

So I'll. I'll say this, John, though, that, that, that. That production cost per bushel should be a driver of an operation, though. It's what got Don and I to where we are. You know, there's a gentleman in North Dakota some years ago told me he was growing corn for $1.47 a bushel. I told him he was wrong, and he can't do it for that. And I strive for five years to grow corn for a $47 a bushel. I can't do it. But I experimented with everything I possibly could to do that. And the big difference between here and Burleigh County, North Dakota is our land cost. I'll never be able to grow corn that cheap because our land cost is so, so much higher. But I did eliminate everything else that I could on the input side of it to get my cost down to, you know, 225 in that particular year. You know, so it, it pushed us to profitability.

Yeah, well, even at 225, much less A$47, I mean, the reality is, looking at the economic landscape at the moment, right as we're having this conversation, I know a lot of growers who haven't made money in the last two years, and it's looking even less promising this year. And that isn't sustainable for very long. You're consuming your equity, and at some point, there's no equity left to consume.

And I just. Our ag lending institutions out here in rural America are getting nervous. I mean, yeah, we had a lot of profitability in farming, but like you say, John, we're burning through equity. And my banker, when I sit down with him, he's like, well, what's your seed cost? Well, we're planting the cheapest conventional corn we can find here, so it's 56 bucks an acre. We don't need the traits because we broke those pest cycles, so our seed cost is cheap. And he says, well, what's your fertility program? And I said, well, it's going to be between 90 and 120 an acre. And he's like, no, what's your fertility cost? Not your seed cost? I'm like, that's my fertility cost. And you know, at the end of the conversation, he's like, well, it looks like you're going to make money again this year. He said, this is the first one I've seen all year. He said, most of the producers coming through here can't even cover their living expenses. They're going to be living off of equity.

Yeah, it's a sad state of affairs and there's, there's a whole number of, whole array of contributing factors that have led us to that spot. But the farmers are being farmed and also they're voluntarily signing up for it. They bear some responsibility as well.

Absolutely. We have got to take our farms back into our own hands. It's amazing to me in the last 75 years how we've been led down this path like you mentioned, John, and there's so many influences and it is unbelievable.

So when you consider that landscape and when you can think about how people change. I wanted to get to this conversation of. You've mentioned how you've learned from other people. At one point you had to travel some distance to learn from others who were going down this pathway. And now you're mentoring a lot of other people. What do the community dynamics look like from your perspective? How are growers shifting and changing?

It's to the outside community, outside of agriculture, the farmers and producers aren't changing fast enough. I get that question a lot. How come, how come the rest of your neighbors aren't changing? They're not changing fast enough. Well, that's reality. And when you look at it, and I don't mean to say this in a bad way, but when you look at what dawn and I have done, you're admitting two things. And two of those things are some of the hardest things that you can do as a human being. In a way, you're admitting you're wrong and you're changing. That's two of the hardest things for a human being to do. So that part is hard and that stops a lot of people. Now dynamics in our local community here, there's more and more people changing and it's not fast change. And it's pushed by many different things. It's pushed by mentoring, it's pushed by. Here in Minnesota, we got the Minnesota Soil Health Coalition that spends a lot of time on the ground putting on field days, exposing producers to this way of farming. There's a lot of one on one personal mentoring. Like you mentioned, there's a lot of, I got to say it, but there's a lot of government programs that are cost sharing to help make this change. But for an individual to make the change, it's right here, it's between the ears. It's, it's all has to be the human change is going to happen. As I mentioned this before, as humans, we can make anything successful and we can make anything fail. So if a producer plants a cover crop and doesn't manage it with the idea that it's going to work, it will be a failure or it will be a problem in their operation, in their management system. So the first thing as a producer, we got to decide, hey, this, this rye cover crop is going to work. It's going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it's going to add to our profitability. And if we don't go into it with that attitude, it's more than likely going to be a failure and never be used as a tool again. And so with all of this, it's got to be, we got to manage it as successful as we can to make it a plus on this, on all sides.

You know, when you think about the two major changes that are the two big acknowledgments, as you pointed out, that I was wrong and making a change and how difficult those are for people, they're difficult on several levels. They're difficult on a very personal level of just admitting those things to yourself, admitting that you were wrong to yourself. But then also the social pressure that comes with that and the community pressure. What are people going to say at local restaurant and the bar and church and wherever else you interact with people. And then there is the possible counter of that that people have frequently brought up here in conversations is the need to surround yourself with a community that supports you and that is aligned with you to balance some of that. What, what are you mentioned? The Minnesota Soil Health Coalition. How is that community structure being developed and how are people, how is that helpful in facilitating change?

Well, like I say, we watched South Dakota do what they did with their coalition. Just watch it blow up from zero to three years to, you know, just about 500 members. And we're close to South Dakota, so we'd run over there for every event they had and just saw the programming was great. Exposing producers to what they need to be exposed to. And so we got it going here in Minnesota. And from zero to five years, we took this thing from zero to a thousand plus members.

Wow.

I mean, that's something you don't see in ag programming, I don't think ever to go from nothing to a thousand plus members. The big thing with the coalition is it addresses all levels of a producer wanting to change from the baby footsteps of just planting the first cover crop or reducing that deep tillage. Pass the most aggressive past to the full on schools. I mean they've done a school for. I think this is the fourth year of trying to get the producer deeper, fuller knowledge of what's happening in these systems. You know, we brought in a lot of, a lot of, a lot of very knowledgeable instructors to try to dive deep into this to help the producers change. On the local level. We've been pushed, and dawn and I were pushed by a local producer who we've mentored for seven years. This man came to my office years ago. We were a member of a small community church. We ran out of people for our church. We had to close the church. Unusual. We didn't run out of money first, but we ran out of people. And he called me and he says, you and dawn will be home at 1 o' clock today. And I'm like, what's going on? I thought we had everything settled with the church. And no, he says, you will be home at 1 o' clock today. I was like, yeah, I guess we'll be here. And he comes into the office of tears in his eyes and he says, it's not working. I listened to you and you and Bob talk about this for 23 years in the back of this church. You got to help my operation out. And so that producer, after seven years of mentoring, his profitability is just incredible. His nitrogen savings, well, he's cut his nitrogen usage in half and still producing the same or better crop, just the dollars in his pocket. So he's like, we got to share this with the local community. We got to start a local group. So I said, I'll supply the office. I don't have time to help with this other than to host the meeting. Don volunteered to take care of the clerical end of it, sending out emails, that type of stuff. So two years ago in February, we started to group here. There were six people at the first meeting, nine people at the second meeting. This second year of existence of what we call the local soil health assembly has no less than 22 to 26 farms at it every other week for a two hour meeting. Now think about this, John. We have a two hour meeting and why we do two hours is specific. We got a lot of young producers in here that got young families which to my amazement, is just makes my heart full to see this many young producers here. We got people with livestock so they know when they can get home to do chores or how to balance their schedule. And what we found is this is key, is putting together these local assemblies or groups. However you do it, time restrictions have to be in place. As farmers, we all like to do sidetalk. And whoever leads these meetings has got to stop the sidetalk and we got to stay focused on what we're doing. And as we've gone through these meetings, imagine this, John. In this group, there's between 25 and 30,000 acres represented. And one of the youngest guys in this group. His plea to this group as we're getting ready to go to planting season this year was, please go to your home farms and experiment with one thing or two things. We don't need university data on this. If you got a yield monitor, do it. Grain cart, whatever, do it. So can you imagine what it's going to be like in November, December this year when you've got 25,000 acres of farms doing experimentation? And I know some of them are doing it with your products, with other products that are on the market. It's going to take us all winter to get through this.

And think about the compounded learning now. Instead of a producer, a farmer, learning from one farm, he's learning from 20. It's going to accelerate learning by 25 to 30x.

Right? We only get 40, 45 chances to do this in a lifetime. And for these young producers, can you imagine what's going through their minds that they're so excited to get through this growing season, to get to this winter, to be able to improve their profitability. And that's what we need, is we got to keep these young producers here. And I want to say this too. The one thing that dawn and I will say all the time is as we started down this path and we started meeting other producers doing the things we are, it's not the cutthroat, stab you in the back conversations or mentality anymore. There. There are producers sitting in this room that I could go to their landlord and say, hey, I want to rent your land. That's never going to happen. We're so focused on trying to make each other's farms profitable, more profitable, so we don't have to have land expansion, so we don't have to farm the world and never get home to our families.

Well, one of my contentions has been that this thing that we're calling regenerative agriculture I think is designed to prevail in the long term for the very simple reason that it allows people, when it's done well, it allows people to become the low cost producer, which is in a different way of saying the profitable producers and the people who are going to survive in the long term are going to be the people who figure it out and figure out how to be profitable even in a high priced input environment.

But you mentioned peer pressure, John. I don't think anybody from the outside looking at agriculture understands the amount of peer pressure in agriculture. It is, why, why are we the, you know, why do we have the highest suicide rate of any occupation in the world? It's because of peer pressure. It's because the pressure that's put on us to grow a big crop and do it this, be the best in the neighborhood, be the best in the community, have the nicest looking crop, that, that pressure is real. But if we can get back to profitability, that takes that pressure off. And I'll say this, dawn and I, we had to grow some pretty thick skin. You know, there was a lot, a lot of things said, a lot of phone calls made to us that said, you can't do this. A lot of our input suppliers said, well, you're just trying to run us out of business. It's like, no, we're not. We're trying to keep ourselves in business. And if you think I'm trying to run you out of business, well, you're a service provider. Provide the services. I need to make these changes. It can all work together and it needs to for our communities in rural America.

Yeah, exactly. That's a wonderful ending note. Grant, I want to say thank you for everything that you've contributed. I'd like to ask you one last question. What is, what is a point of view that you hold that is very different from your peers, people who are in the same space who are also aligned with regenerative agriculture? What is something that you believe to be true that is perhaps different from the common view?

I guess you, you brought it up already. Mindana and I have had big discussions about this. We're afraid of the term regenerative. We're absolutely, definitely afraid of the term regenerative to the point where, my word, dawn is a beautiful, gifted writer and she can put things in words. And she said, our model on our farm is not going to be regenerative. It's going to be farmers of life for life. And a lot of that comes from Dr. Jonathan Lundgren has become a good friend of Ours, you know, he, he talks about the whole carbon situation and he says, I hope in five years we're done talking about carbon, because it simply comes back. Because it simply comes back to the fact that carbon is directly associated with life. So that's why Don came up with that motto for our farm. And that's what we're going to run with.

So I'd like, I'd like that, I like that phrase, but I'd like to better understand why the reservations around the term regenerative.

We've seen it with sustainability, John. You know, companies run with sustainability as their logo. I'm afraid companies are going to run with regenerative as their logo. I hope, I hope that it is for the betterment and for the good. It's not greenwashing that. That's why we're tentative about it. It seems like all the terms in agriculture get, get used as a marketing tool in some way or another. And I really, and I really, I really hope that it gets used in a positive and good. Good purpose.

Yeah. Good. Well, thank you, Grant. I'm glad I asked that last question. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all the work that you're doing, all the support that you're offering to so many people, and I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Absolutely. And thank. Thank you, John, for what your group does. Also, it's influential. It's being noticed.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you.