Episode 180: Shifting Management Logistics to Build a Better Lifestyle with Tom Cotter

Hi friends, this is John Kempf. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, where we have all kinds of fun conversations discussing how we can improve soil health, how we can improve livestock health, and ultimately, of course, how we can improve human health. Because if we're not growing food for people, if we're not working to sustain and further develop ecosystems, then after all, what are we doing it for? So thank you all for being here today. I'm delighted to be joined by Tom Cotter., who's someone I've been looking forward to speaking with for quite some time. Tom, thank you for being here. I'm not even going to attempt to do an introduction of your operation and background because I want you to do that. Thanks for joining me here, and tell us a bit about your story and the, the context, the scope of your operation.

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Uh, it's an honor to be on with the great John Kempf. So my, my history would Go back to 1994, moved back to the farm, uh, started farming with my dad. We were conventional everything, and so full tillage, chemical. My dad, you know, he wasn't heavy on chemical, but we'd use it as needed. Uh, I really— when I came back, my dad is what, 30 years older than me. Yeah, so he, he had the old work ethic and said, hey, let's, let's get you, let's get you more work. So he bought a tile plow, and that's where I really started learning about soil health. We did have corn, beans, and we would do occasionally peas, but we always did sweet corn, and that gave us options to do tiling during the summertime and The elderly seed house talked my dad into planting this green thing called dwarf Essex, or no, rapeseed, canola, rapeseed and dwarf. And we planted it just on 20 acres of a 70-acre field and realized how much easier the tile plow pulled and how much better the yields were the next year. Actually, when my dad was combining the corn next year, he asked me, what do we do here? What variety is this?. It wasn't the variety. It wasn't the chemical plant. It wasn't the fertilizer because we always did the exact same thing on the dry fertilizer, you know, on the planter. And it took us a while to figure out that it was actually that plant.

It was where the canola had been the year prior.

Yes, the 20 acres out of the 70-acre field. I remember the exact spot. And you know, when you're, when you're in the trench digging, you know, things, and I always remember our Soil smelled stale and dead and no earthworms. Dug hard because my dad was on the backhoe, so I got the shovel and we dig around. And once we started putting the rape seed and then we went to cereal rye, uh, not on every acre but usually all the canning crop acres because we would— they had harvested so early, we don't want to do tillage early because we didn't want the ground exposed. We started planting that cover crop to stop the weeds too. And all of a sudden earthworms appeared and the soil started smelling good. And, you know, back then we were about 1,100 acres and it was pretty sad. You can't find an earthworm to take your little boy fishing. You know, my boy was probably 2 to 5 years old in that timeframe and 1,100 acres, no worms. And once we started doing that, I started noticing the worms. We played along with the COVID crops from 1998 or '96 to about 2012, just planting the monocrop, and kind of started feeling like, you know, I'm just doing a monocrop now. And, you know, back then I was a young farmer. I actually got into a program that it was paying me to plant the COVID crop, but I had— I put the Gandhier box on my disc, which I still have and parked for many years, and then I got into organic, I had to bring it back, which isn't good, but it's a tool that I use.

Uh, you know, I'm, I'm so intrigued. Your story about the earthworms, um, reminds me of a story that James Johnson has shared. Neither he nor his father had ever seen an earthworm on their entire operation. This was 50 years of history, they'd never saw an earthworm. And they started applying some biologicals and doing some cover crops, making some changes. They had earthworms back on the farm in 18 months.

Where did—

after not having seen one for 50 years, where did they come from? How did they return that route? It's just the resilience of these natural ecosystems is, is just remarkable to me.

Yeah, we, we have no idea what— just, just like the ocean, the soil is the same way. We, we really don't know. I mean, we, we can always put it into studies and scientific, but it's mind-blowing. It's absolutely mind-blowing what's going on. Uh, earthworms, you know, we got the earthworms back with the COVID crops, but it took me many years to start utilizing the livestock side too, and Once I started doing big diverse mixes, that was back in like 2013-15 timeframe. Uh, my friend TJ Curtis was out and he helped me put— we put a big mix together, started grazing. The next spring we went out and the earthworms that we dug up, you know, TJ is shooting a video and I'm just like, I'm swearing. And I'm like, you know, it's like, you can't be swearing on this video, but It was absolutely mind-blowing. And that picture has actually been in No-Till magazine many times. It's— there's got to be 25, 30 just in one little—

one shovel full.

Yeah. And just— and they're just oozing out everywhere. And that's when I realized, you know, while doing the monocrops for so many years and then jumping into diversity and the livestock grazing. So it just— it keeps on going.

I want to ask about this, this, where you got this earthworm explosion, we'll call it. Was that— what do you attribute most of that to? What have you observed? Did you think a great deal of that just came from the diversity of COVID crop species? Or did the majority of that come from the livestock integration or a combination of both?

I think absolutely a combination of both. I always consider, you know, I, when I started doing mixes, I went up to 40-way mix. And yeah, I'm just trying to play the scale, and you know, it depends on the ground. If it's a really variable field, it gets more diversity. If it's pretty even, which I don't have many very even fields even though they're pretty flat, uh, that diversity of COVID crops feeds just so much more earthworms— or not earthworms, microbiology. And so for every plant you get different families, and to think that we know anything about these because there's, you know, you know, the teaspoon idea of how much biology of life is in there. We just don't know yet, I don't think. And but that's where I know what I see, and I watch an explosion from the multi-species, but then also putting that livestock on there. But I will say you can go backwards with both of them if you get too diverse and Well, actually not. I will say diversity is just my probably favorite and livestock is really close, but you can go backwards with the livestock if you overgraze.

And so if you overgraze or I don't know what conditions are like in, in your terrain, but here in our area, our soils will, you will pay your soils will make you pay and your soils will, will be very damaged if you graze when wet, when the soil is too wet. They're just definitely compactable and you just, you can't compromise. And so we've had a number of good friends of mine who are grazing here in the local area where I'm located geographically, and we've had good grass for 6 weeks and they've only been able to be out grazing for the last 2 weeks. So they had 4 weeks with good grass but too wet. Okay, and so they stayed indoors. Um, that's— you haven't yet spoken about where you are geographically.

I'm in Austin, Minnesota, so southeast Minnesota. I'm probably 12 miles from the Iowa border, uh, right along I-90. So if you're ever on I-90 my way, all you gotta do— I used to be able to say you could look for a big yellow barn because we're just about a half mile south of the I-90, but we lost that to a storm here December 15th a couple years ago. But if it's yellow when everything else is green, that's usually my sunflowers. If there's animals grazing, those are my animals. If the wind— if the dust isn't blowing, that's, you know— oh my goodness, that's kind of a sad state of affairs. You can often not contrast it. It is. And we've seen a lot of dust blowing around this area. Yeah. Last year, actually, uh, someone on the Austin Township Board, you know, even noted on Facebook saying, hey, accidents on the east side of town from all the dust, and we get to the west side and it's beautiful green. And, uh, it's quite the compliment, uh, he's referring to my fields. And so, you know, nice. I'm literally, I'm literally like 1 mile out of town, so I'm the very edge of the of the town.

When I look at the dust that has been blowing again, the soil that has been blowing the last couple of years, and some of the headlines that we've seen and the images that we've seen, the stuff like— at what point are people going to put liability back on the farmers for accidents and for, uh, lung health issues, pulmonary issues, and so forth? It's It's, uh, we've lived in a consequence-free world for quite some time, apparently.

Yeah, but you know, you say put it back on the farmer. I do believe the farmer can do 100% better, but it's the whole— it's all the way along the process of being a farmer, you know. Yeah, it's the insurance and the—

absolutely—

state rules and federal regulations, and everyone wants cheap food, and you know, nothing comes cheap.

We have a screwed up system. There's— you'll get no argument from me on that.

We do. And that's why I like promoting more locally, you know, in town. Hey, I can feed you. I really thought when COVID came through, I thought we were going to really realize how fragile our food system is. And I think everyone just kind of forgot. You know, you get 2 years out of it and everyone forgets and they start going back to Walmart buying the cheap food that's not even food really.

But there are a couple of data points that I think haven't really entered the consciousness, not just of consumers, but of farmers as well. And it just, it just puzzles me. That we apparently do not have a national food security priority or plan. A lot of people don't realize that we became a net food importer in 2023. We import more than we export. And in the category of fresh fruits and vegetables, we import the majority, greater than 65%. Now granted, we're not going to grow pineapples and bananas and avocados in large quantities here in, in the States. But we've exported the majority of even our fresh fruit and vegetable consumption to Central South America, Mexico. And that's just— how is that smart from a food security perspective?

It's cheaper.

So the dollar prevails.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it used to be, you know, victory gardens and eat seasonal. And, you know, we've all got— we've all— and it's everyone, it's me included, you, we just get— we enjoy having that pineapple in the middle of the wintertime. Yeah, even though I will say it does not taste as good, but still good enough to put into a piña colada or something. So yeah.

Yeah. So let's— you started by describing some of your, your history and your journey and the various things you've been playing around with over the years. Catch us up to speed. Give us a snapshot of where your operation is at this moment in time.

Okay, well, you know, I'm, I'm backwards from everyone. I started doing cover crops first and was still doing the tillage. Uh, I always say taking one step forward and two steps back, but I saw the benefits. And so in 2015, started putting in, uh, reduced tillage, no-till, uh, strip-till on the corn, no-till on soybeans, started doing diverse mixes. 2018 went to all no-till, but then in 2017 I had one small field that we went to organic. So nowadays I'm— was it, uh, 40% organic and 60% no-till, which roughly comes about 340 acres of organic ground and 430 of conventional no-till, uh, and then 80 acres pasture, All the cattle, we used to feed sweet corn silage and always have hay or chopped corn. Now I'm all grass finished. And there can always be the argument of what tastes better, but I know it doesn't cost me barely anything to feed the cattle when you plant 800 acres of COVID crops. There's always something out there growing and I've, used to only graze, you know, 2 months out of the year, then I went, uh, 4 months and then 8 months, and now I graze probably 10 months out of the year. I do a lot. I got into bale grazing. I love that. That I always tell people, that's my high technology variable rate fertilizer. You know, you go put the bales where you want the manure and let the cattle do the work for you. Good friend Tom Finnegan always said you know, let the cattle work for you instead of you working for them. And I, I definitely see that, uh, my livestock are just easy, easy, you know, move a paddock. And, you know, during when we have time, the packs go small. When we get busy during harvest, they get a little bigger. I always have pea ground, which is usually anywhere from 80 to 140 acres I'll, I'll go in and cut those up in the paddocks, and I, I absolutely enjoy watching that. And then the benefits I get from having that diverse mix out there just really is a payback. I'm actually on my organic ground right now. I was just incorporating red, red clover. So I'm putting— yes, I spent money on the COVID crop or the red clover last year in organic oats, and I got to graze last year. I got to graze this spring. I got to incorporate the red clover. I'm getting nitrogen benefit from it. I still use a little bit of, uh, chicken litter out there, so I have all this bio— different biology going on. And I just— the more I go down this road, the more I just— there's always one more step, there's one more step, there's one more step. And I always tell Ray Archuleta, I love you, you've taught me a lot, But my cattle have taught me more. Yeah, just watching the livestock and what they're doing really changes the mindset of how I do things.

So, so I want to come back to that. But before I go down that particular earthworm hole, catch us up to speed a bit on what does your, what does your crop mix look like today? You spoke about having corn and soybeans and sweet corn and peas historically. Okay.

Well, I'll go to the organic first. There I usually have organic oats, organic sunflowers, corn, soybeans, sweet corn. I have grown hemp grain and fiber. I absolutely love that. But, you know, we need more infrastructure for that.

Need markets. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. And then on the conventional, it's— I call conventional, but it's the no-till side. There's peas, sweet corn, sunflowers, corn, and soybeans. And so it's not always the same rotation. Every field kind of gets tweaked around a little bit according to what my livestock possibilities are for grazing. I always want to try and get my animals to cover all the acres every year. So like, and that's what I really like about organic. I'm planting I'm going to start planting corn right now, and my animals have been out grazing all these fields. Pull them off, now the rye grew back beautiful. It's good weed protection and feed value. But doing that organic crops gives me— so it gives me an extra month of grazing in the spring. But I will graze in the spring before sunflowers because I can plant those late, before sweet corn usually, before soybeans.. But then when you jump the other side, I graze after peas, after corn, uh, and I can graze after sunflowers too because they're, they're a lot shorter. It all depends on so what you do. I do a lot of interseeding when possible.

We— I haven't asked you about herd size, but it sounds to me from what you're describing like the majority of your grazing time is coming from crop ground and not from pasture ground.

Absolutely. I have 60 acres of pasture in one spot and then about 10 acres right here locally. But I really have capitalized on double dipping in on my acres. You know, your best asset is your land, and so if you're only using it 4 months out of the year for a cash crop, you're leaving a whole benefit out— income revenue stream. And I think I figured up here the other day with another guy that I was talking to I think we were coming up to right around $300 to $350 worth of bales a day that they would eat. And when they're out on that ground, it's not that I am putting money in my pocket, but I'm not taking money out of my pocket. I think we came up to $20,000 for 2 months of— let's see what it was— some— it was some $350 a day, I think, is what we came down to. Uh, and so when you start thinking about that, I'm getting double income. I've even had fields, like, especially after peas— and peas are not a huge income, but it's a third, or probably 40%. The grazing's another 30%. And then if I can sell something off there, which I don't like selling because that's taking nutrients out of you, But what I get back the next year is I get to reduce my fertilizer. And I will say, when I— the more I go down this gravel road of— I don't know if you call it regenerative, I probably more holistic, uh, the more contemporary things I use like synthetic fertilizer or chemical, it actually doesn't work as good. Works better when I always have that regenerative mind and I'm going that route. And it just— it should, it should work so good with just synthetics. But you know what? I see, I see the damage that it's doing. And yes, you can, you can grow a great crop, but man, you are sticking a lot of money into it. And I'm telling you one thing, I am cheap.

So Tom, it strikes me that as we're having this conversation, ever since we started this discussion, you have this slight smile on your face, and it sounds— it feels to me like you're just having a ton of fun.

I am, I am. Uh, you know, when you're working at something, it's, it's always fun, but when you're fighting, it's, it's, it's never any good. And I, I coached wrestling for 18 years. I was on a co-op board for 18 years, and been married for 30, and out of all these things I do, I take all these bits and pieces and I put it into the farm. And my wife has been really good to teach me, like, hey, you know, she didn't grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth, like, you know, on a farm and all these beautiful acres. And I, I take her life lessons and I put them in, relay them to the farm. And, uh, just so many things happening and I always want to relate, well, the soil life is the exact same thing as human life. And so if you're happy, that's going to be healthy. Uh, yeah, I always tell that, you know, you know, if you don't think it's true, just go into the nursing home. Most people there are not happy and they're not healthy. They're on their dying days. So do I want my cow locked in the pens, or I want them all doing what they're made to do, and that's grazing. When I bale graze, they'll go eat a bale, great, they'll go eat a little bale, but 80% of the time they're all grazing even when there's nothing out there. But that's just the way they are made. Now, do I want them eating everything down to nothing? No, but in the wintertime, that's, that's what happens.

So earlier in our conversation, you'd made a comment that you've, uh, you've learned way more from watching your livestock graze than you have from from listening to human teachers. Tell us a little bit about that. What, what are some of the things that you've learned from watching the livestock graze? What have been some of the observations that caught your attention?

One of the first things was when I did a large, I think it was a 23-way mix, and I put the cattle into the first paddock and I thought, you know what, I'm going to be smart and just get down to the best 5. And I watched the cattle come in and I sat down and I will tell you, there's nothing better than sitting down on the soil in a big 5-foot-tall cover crop and watching the cow graze. But I started writing down everything they were doing, everything they were eating first, then second, third, fourth, fifth. And I thought, okay, I only need to plant these 5. I, I know it all, you know, this is what my feed guy is going to tell me is the best products. But then we moved to the next paddock, they start eating totally different things, and I just took that paper and threw it away. I thought, you know what, I cannot, you know, put my— I'm not a very scientific guy, but I can't, I can't take human knowledge of what we think we know when the cows are proving me wrong by what they're eating. You know, these plants are pulling up different nutrients all day long, different times of the days. One week later, the nutrients can be different, and, and the cows' nutrition requirements can be different.. And they have their senses. They know that we, we, we don't have these senses. We just, we're taking a snapshot of one second in time where those animals are living this. I always tell soil health is a, it's like a river. It's flowing up and down and it's all around. And, you know, Bruce Lee always talked about, uh, you know, be like water and flow with it. And that's kind of, I wanna be able to flow with what Mother Nature's given me. So, In drought years, I always change my cover crops to the weather patterns and what's going on out there. I'm always adjusting. There's— I never know what I'm doing until it's already been done. I write stuff down all the time. This is the plan. And it always— I change it with what Mother Nature's given me.

So, so, Tom, I'm going to flip scripts for a bit here. If you You've been using the words of flowing and constantly adapting. So if you imagine that life is a river and that you are in a boat on the river and you're paddling your boat or your canoe, in this, in this imagination of yours, are you traveling up the river or down the river?

Oh boy, that is a tough question. Can I go both ways? Because there's, there's something I want up there and something I want down there. I don't know if I can say it's one way or the other, but I will say it's getting rockier, it's getting more white rapids, uh, You know, it's just amazing how I'm seeing all the fields around me, and mine included, even though I think I'm doing a great job, it's not on par what Mother Nature really wanted to have out there. But I see how fast we go from wet to dry and all these extremes. I went from cold, cold, cold to now it's 85, 90 degrees, and my cover crops are At the beginning of the month, I said they're about a week behind. A week later, I said they're all— they're 2 and a half weeks behind. Now I literally think they're just about a month behind. Uh, so am I going up or down? I think I'm going wherever the least resistance is, which makes you say you're going downhill, but I know I need to work and go upstream to— because you, you will find more things if you fight the current of the way farming is going right now. It's— we're trying to— it's trying to blast us down this way, but I think if I go up that way, I can find a nice lagoon to hang out in and make the— make it, you know, livestock. I, I'm grass-finished cows, and I have grass-finished feeders, but now I've jumped into— and not huge, but I have my foot in the door— I have chickens and pigs and sheep And I just keep on seeing these little benefits. And is it a large amount? No, that's enough to feed me and family and have some good sales. But I have my foot in the door. I really think that's the big thing with these cover crops and no-till. If you never tried it, it's kind of hard. But if you, if you play with it and learn what's going on, you can really expand it quite fast.

What have you been surprised by? As you've been on this journey, what really caught your attention?

How much more when I try and do conventional practices into this regenerative world, how they don't work like they used to. They're not as efficient. I think as I got my ground more natural, I should say, if I go apply urea, I see an effect of, you know, what, how it can harden the ground. And, you know, you always hear nitrogen, nitrogen, nitrogen. Well, too much nitrogen makes you— the ground go hard. So do I want a good balance? And I really want that soil covered. And I will say it's getting harder to keep the ground covered because for one, the biology is eating that much more. But once, once you, you know, build it and they come, now you got to keep on feeding them. So.

All right, let's, let's talk about that a bit because this is, this is pretty important in some parts of the world where they really need to keep soil covered. Um, what, what have you been observing with soil cover being digested more rapidly, and, and how has that shifted?

Well, I used to grow CBD. We started a company, Superior Cannabis Company, and I grew CBD hemp plants for our couple different— we had 3 different stores, Minnesota and Wisconsin. And my first year of that, I laid down about 8-foot-tall cover crop. And when I laid down, I thought, boy, I'm gonna have to deal with this next year, but we'll just— we'll lay it down and we'll fight that battle next year. The next year, it was all gone. That, uh, the microbes were there, consumed it, fed beautiful hemp crops for 3 years at least, and then we moved on to a different spot. But I will say, having that ground covered— you know, like, and I'll come back to bale grazing because that is the best way to get your ground covered because you're putting a high carbon-nitrogen ratio out there, bale, and the cow eat it, yes, but there's always that extra residue. And if you don't have diversity and you're just a corn-soybean guy, that first year you'll see stunted corn in that spot or stunted soybeans. And then at the following year, you'll see better ones there.. But if you have diversity in your cash crops, like my sunflowers, which you would think it'd be the exact opposite because sunflowers, you know, can take a little drier and they, they, they kind of like tillage. But I've seen every time where I bale graze and then I just put my sunflowers right where the bales are, they're always a foot taller and much bigger diameter. And they're, they'll be heading out easily a week ahead. And it just, it blows my mind. It's like, well, that goes against everything I thought. But, you know, when you have that ground cover, that biology can just be much more alive. Those earthworms are going to be— you know, every time it gets dry, what happens? The earthworms disappear, right? They go down deep and you don't see them. When you have that moisture, I've seen it in the— I've seen when I bale graze in the wintertime, earthworms on top of the ground when I move that bale. It can be -5 degrees out and they're crawling around doing their jobs. Like, wow. They're working, you know, all year long instead of hibernating when it's cold out. But that's because that extra residue, that ground cover, it's, it's pretty. And I've heard people say my ground doesn't even freeze, which up here I think I'd kind of like to have it be able to freeze so we get that freeze-thaw cycles. But, uh, then again, do we really know what the soil wants and needs? I don't know.

So I had asked you about what you've learned from observing the livestock. And I'd like to take that same question or that same framing and apply it to crops. What have you learned from observing your crops? Or what— how have your crops started behaving differently?

I've learned that there's, there's no waste. Uh, and that's, that's hard for farmers because they think, oh, that, that residue of the corn, get rid of it, bury it. So I mean, you know, I always look for other revenues, uh, especially in the grazing side. So if cash crops going, I want to know if I can be able to interseed into it so the minute they come off I can be grazing. I want to use that ground multiple times. What plants work good with interseeding. Sunflowers I can interseed into, corn I can. Sweet corn, it's very easy to interseed, but you also gotta remember that now they can start competing because there's not much, you know, it's a short plant, low populations. I've learned that these— I always want to have— when I got in the organic world, I always thought about, okay, I need to get nutrients cycling. Up and down, up and down. And my cash crops now, especially on the conventional side, I want to see that too. On the organic, it's always a focus. The COVID crop always gets the most intense because it's for weed control and grazing. Whereas on the conventional sides, I always think, oh, I got chemicals, so I can fall back on chemical. But that's not a good way to go through farming, thinking that I have to use this tool all the time. I always like, if I'm gonna be planting soybeans, I want to have a good solid rye, winter rye out there. Fight those plants with plants. And so what have I learned from cash crops is that I want more rotation. Uh, last year we had sunflowers and a lady came out, an insect lady, uh, I can't think of her name right now, great lady. And she found corn leaf beetles out there. I said, oh, is that a problem? It's like, no, actually your neighbors should be thanking you because in the cornfield they're going to do damage, but in the sunflower they do not do any damage at all. I'm like, well, am I building a nest for them? It's like, no, they'd still be here, they would still be eating no matter what. So you are actually giving them a safe place to go and have those insects without doing damage. So The more I get in the cash crop, the more cash crops I want, more diversity, just absolutely. I see the damage of just doing corn, beans, corn, beans. That's why I have a 5-way rotation. I would really love to get up to even higher yet, but we're never going to get there if we can't change the Farm Bill, insurance, the way people eat. I often tell people, you know, the can companies, they're cutting back on peas, it seems like every year. But how many kids do you know eat peas nowadays? They go get a french fry at McDonald's and that's what they're eating. I, I see it in my grandkids. Uh, so is it all a farmer's fault? Absolutely not. It's, it's our whole society. We have to change how we eat.

It, it is a very multi-dimensional problem. Economics. We earlier spoke about cheap food, and you mentioned insurance, and we have layers and layers of perverse incentives. Um, but one of the things that comes to mind that I'd like to touch on— I, I would like to, I would like to taste your frozen peas because there's been far too many occasions where I have been to a potluck event or a public event or something like that, and the peas and the vegetables that are served just flat out aren't good. I mean, I'm an adult, I'm not a kid, and I don't want to eat them. And, um, so, and I've, I've seen this with, with farms that we've visited that have really great food. I have a 6-year-old daughter, and, uh, well, I've got lots of friends we are fortunate enough, I'm fortunate enough to be in a part of a community that grows a lot of its own food. And I would say, I mean, certainly we all have our own tastes and there are some things that just aren't appealing to us. I have a personal fairly intense dislike for tomatoes, for example. But aside from that, aside from those personal taste preferences, many times I've watched my daughter who loves broccoli. When we have broccoli at home or we have broccoli from a high-quality source, she will consume broccoli like a snack. And we'll be traveling somewhere, we'll get broccoli at a restaurant, hard pass.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you talk about peas, but I remember we do field days every year, and Minnesota Soil Coalition helps me do all this stuff, which I love getting out and helping farmers. Because when I, when I got into farming, I didn't have anyone to talk to. I didn't know there was Gabe Brown out there. I didn't know Ray, uh, but they've helped me help other farmers. But I didn't stop there. I go to help my community. And so we do food health days. I've been doing— I think we're on our 6th or 7th year this year. And I remember one year the sweet corn lined up just perfectly in my organic sweet corn, which They can't spray for fungicide anyways, but literally the conventional fields right next door, even though it was good practices, they still spray no matter what. And, but when we were having that field day, we made our organic sweet corn and I don't think one person put butter or salt on it. They literally ate the corn just as it was and it was absolutely the most amazing cry. I've yet to repeat that exactly just like that, but there's so many factors that come into growing stuff that just because you put nutrients there and you have sun and there's water, you think that's all it needs. No, there's, there's much more to it. And so I've had major successes, but even when I have failures, I know that it's not a loss because I have cattle and I can come back in and I can always capitalize on what's out there.

So you mentioned that if, if you had— if you didn't have some of the perverse incentives or the lack of opportunity, you would desire to expand your rotation even further. What are some of the opportunities that you see? What are some of the things that you would like to do given the ability to do so?

Well, I would definitely like to grow hemp again, hemp grain and fiber. Uh, because there's just so many good products that can be made out of that. I really think that would help everything. Uh, I would like to get into probably some different kind of beans, black beans and stuff like that. And that's— and really, I could do that. I just, I feel pretty good right now, but I, I have my conventional side and I'm always trying to I will say master the practices and then take it organic. And not that you ever master it because Mother Nature will change something on you, but I try and take it from the conventional side where I have a backup plan, a chemical, and then bring it into the organic. And, but, and the nice thing with the organic side is I can do more experiments with cash crops because the money's there. Say sunflowers, it's double the price. Right there is just, oh, why wouldn't I plant sunflowers? When my friend asked me about growing hemp, I thought, no problem, I grow 30 different ways of COVID crops, why, why would it matter if I grow one more? Even when I was doing organic ground and organic hemp, you know, my certifier's like, well, you have to move your cash crop. Like, well, my cash crop is the minority out there, there's only 6,000 plants, but yet Every year I plant 2 million plants out there. And so they actually let me stay in the exact same spot because of my diverse rotations. So would I want to plant more cash crops? Absolutely. But the problem is the infrastructure and the prices are just so terrible on the conventional side. That's why the organic, it gives me more possibility of doing that. And you have to do tillage on one side, you have to do chemical on the other. I literally, I see both sides and I want to take all the good and get rid of the bad and reduce the bad. We're human, so we're always going to be doing something bad.

So you actually have the benefit of perspective. Let me, how long have you been doing both organic and conventional? And the follow-up question, the question I really want to get to is there's this constant debate on which does the most damage to soil. Is it herbicides or is it tillage? And I certainly have an opinion about that. And I do think it does vary dependent on context and soil characteristics. But I'd like to hear what you have observed. What have you observed?

Well, I've been Both in 2017, there's only 20 acres in 2017, but it went 20, 80, 160, and now, you know, we're at 340. And actually, it's, it's the ground that I have that's the organic. But I literally— people would always ask which is better, and I even had David Kleinschmidt out and we ran some microburst tests on biology, and the organic was It was good. I mean, I don't do— I reduce my tillage as much as possible, and if there is tillage, it's with the purpose of incorporating green manure. But we took a shot out there, and it was microburst, I don't know, 800, something like that, if I remember correctly. But then we went into the no-till side, and it was 2,000. Everyone's like, wow, that's so much better. And but then at the end of the year, that organic crop was more like a $2,000 return gross, and my conventional is more like a $650. So which is better? I, I will say, whenever I interseed into the organic, I always have success. There is no chemical residue, and I don't care what you do on the conventional side, there's always that stuff is laying in there. I'm I remember going to a conference once and, uh, one of the top guys in on mushrooms was talking fungi. And I was like, hey, which is worse, chemical or tillage? And he said, what goes deeper? And I thought, wow, that's pretty powerful, because chemical does. But I do like to refer back to human life.

Exactly.

So, and we've been doing tillage for 10,000 years farming. You know, we've been growing crops and we're, we're in a dire spot. Even here in the United States, we're 250 years in and we have had major disasters for the last 75, 100. And I don't know if we could go that long with the chemical. Or in fact, I know we can't go that long with the chemical.

Right.

And so, you know, you look at Iowa, which is my neighbor to the south, are— we're sending them pretty dirty water. We try and get it cleaner, but to see what's been going on down in Iowa with the dust storms and the cancer rates of how high they've jumped, it's just like, you know, one of my favorite things about getting into regenerative agriculture, if you want to say that, is I grow life, I feed life, I don't kill life. That's why when we, we used to be a 200 to 500 head feeder lot, brought in feeders, sold them, raised them up, got rid of them. Once I switched to cow-calf, I absolutely just, that's brought smiles to my face. I, I enjoyed seeing life born on the farms, like, wow, that's what a farm is. And then I jumped into growing cover crops and doing this, I was like, those are the two most exciting moments in farming that I've ever had. It's not a new combine, it's not another piece of land or something. It's, it's changing these practices and working with Mother Nature and making the land better and trying to give a better, uh, produce to our, uh, consumers. My— I was on co-op board and I remember when that magazine came out, Successful Farming, Meet Your New Boss. Yeah, and everyone in that boardroom laughed and laughed, and they said, oh God, they're gonna be paying $8 for eggs. And I just kind of smiled, said, yeah, I'll sell to them. You know, that's a good thing, that's a good thing. But where are you, where do you think that your customer is not the one that is driving the demand is just crazy. I want to grow what people want. I want people coming to me, and I, I've had that. A lot of my grain— I don't even have semis because most of my grain gets hauled off by the buyer of the product. And that's a pretty damn good way to run an operation.

Yeah. You know, sometimes when you're in conversations with people, there's something about the context of the moment that something registers in a different way or appears in a different way. And I was just struck when you were describing sending dirty water to Iowa and the challenges that we have with, uh, with health challenges in agricultural communities. All of a sudden, that just kind of struck a nerve for me. And from a philosophical perspective, shouldn't growing food be one of the cleanest, cleanest and healthiest professions.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I will say, you asked me about the organic and conventional and what's better, and I told you just a scientific, you know, research on microbes, and yes, I proved the point. But what I do, I, I like to simplify things and really It's— we don't have to get all crazy on what we're doing. What I do is I do pluses and negatives on everything I do on my farm. So everything that I do on the organic side, it gets a negative or gets a plus. I plant a cover crop, that's a plus. Multi-cover crops, that's another plus. Tillage, that's a negative. Tillage again, that's a negative. Corn, just corn soybean rotation, that's a negative. You got to have more. More rotations, a loss. On the conventional side, I do the exact same thing— fungicides, insecticides, you name it, I, I put it down. It's just as simple as plus and negative. And people can sit there and say, oh, it's not— that's not a negative. But, you know, truthfully, be honest with yourself. And I go through and I monitor those things. And that's where I told you, you know, like, soil health is a river and you just flow with it. Is my organic always better?

No.

Some years it's better, some years it's worse. It depends on what the weather patterns are doing and what I have to do for tillage. But, and I don't care if I go up or down, but my, my trajectory should always be an upward trend. And so I like to look at things across your rotation. So my rotation, 5 rotation, 5-way rotation, balance the ROI on that, look at my Sellahull scores, very simple.. But it keeps you honestly conscious about what I do. I don't spray fungicides, insecticides on my, uh, conventional ground. It just, I don't need to because that rotation has helped me do that stuff. Uh, I, I was, I like being simple.

Yeah. I was having a related conversation just recently around tillage versus herbicides, and just our mindset around health and the impact of agriculture and human health. And one of the points that was made and reiterated from a couple of different perspectives was that the, the reason foundationally that herbicides and many of these compounds seem to be such a win, and they, they seem to be valuable tools is because our analysis is optimized for economics in the short term. We look at economics of what does it cost to produce this crop this year, and we fail to factor in what is the cumulative cost of an herbicide application over 30 years. What's the cumulative cost of the ecosystem and the way that that expresses itself in the soil's ability to grow a crop, to nourish a crop, and the additional costs that might come with that in terms of increased nutritional applications or perhaps increased herbicide applications. We don't factor that longer term into our analysis. And then if you want to go even the next step beyond that, we don't factor in the external costs of what are the, what are the costs to the people who eating the food? What are the costs of clean water in Iowa? That those are all externalities. And it's, I think that, that framing of short-term versus long-term ROI would give us a much different perspective on what really is providing value and what is not.

Yeah, I, you know, I, I do both. So I'm literally the guy pointing at himself saying, oh, that's the wrong thing to do. But I, I do know that, you know, everything in moderation. Yeah, everything in moderation. Uh, quit chronically doing it. And I, I see this all the time, is that people do things just because they've always done them. Do they actually need it? I know I have farmers all around me, they're always spray, they even spray insecticide every year. And I ask them like, well, do you have bugs? Oh, it's just cheap to put it in the co-op. You know, co-op said put it in because you're already there. Well, I was on a co-op board for 18 years. I know their main thing is their agronomist, it's a salesman. And now I will say I do feel good about how the agronomists now are changing and kind of seeing that, hey, let's start looking at this more wholly. I don't even want to say holistically, but I want to say look as a whole. And they're saying, okay, don't spend the money if you don't have to. You know, when times are good What do we do? We just throw everything at it. When times are bad, that's when you really start thinking, okay, I got to cut back and I got to do my best. And it's just, it's a shame that we're chronically doing things. I often show Chernobyl. I show a picture of this beautiful landscape, green animals there. It's like, is this healthy soil? And it's like, yeah, that looks great. And it's like, nope, that's Chernobyl. But it is healthy. But what did they do? They got rid of the humans because after the meltdown, but they quit chronically doing things. And yes, it's the worst natural disaster ever, but it wasn't a chronic natural disaster. And I think in farming, we are chronically doing it. You know, the soil can repair, our body can repair, but not when we're sticking french fries and pop in it every day. You have to, you have to have a balance and it's so hard. It's so easy to just jump into easy, easy, easy when, you know, nothing good comes easy.

So Tom, one of the things I want to ask you about, it strikes me that you and I have some similar perhaps personality characteristics in the sense that trying new things doesn't intimidate us. Um, we embrace new things and lean into them. We enjoy the process. And go ahead.

No, go ahead.

And there are, uh, there are many people who are listening to the type of operation you have, and you have all of this diversity, all these different enterprises. You have livestock, you have half a dozen different crops, you have those different crops in both organic and conventional. And they're like, I can't do that. I can't, I can't do— and there are many growers who are growing 2 or 3 or 4 crops and they feel fully tapped out, um, frazzled. And they, they see all of these hurdles and barriers to trying other things. The thing I, I have a hard time putting myself in their position because I have a very different kind of inherent perspective on that. I, I see opportunity where others see challenges. But I'd like— you, you are, you're actively farming in, in this same macroeconomic context that many other people are. Uh, what are your thoughts for people who find themselves in that situation?

Uh, I think they'd be amazed that the last 5 years, well, starting 5 years ago, right in the middle of harvest, I was able to take off and go up to northern Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota, and see the leaves changing. Now, does that sound like a guy that's overwhelmed with work? No. What I've done is I've spread my workload out to where all these different cash crops I, my planting season is I plant for 2 days, I have a week and a half off, then I plant for a day, I have another week off, week and a half off. I have this rotation that's spread out, and it's so easy to get stuff planted in 1 day, sometimes it's 2. And when you have that diverse rotation, you, you literally get a little more time. I, I don't I rarely have to work weekends. Yes, I run out and check my cattle, but you know what? It's literally drive out, look at them, say, okay. Sometimes I gotta haul water. My Christmas time bale grazing, you know what I have to do for to feed 40 cows and then another 60 feeders? I move the fence 30 more feet the day before Christmas. So I know when I, I don't even have to do anything for Christmas. It's just people think it's hectic, but it's just I'm working with nature and it just— I work less now than I did. I used to brag about 120 hours a week, you know, back when I was younger, and I lost out on my family, put the workload on my wife, and now it's like, heck, Friday, yeah, tomorrow I gotta go look at the cows quick and then we'll go for a motorcycle ride. We'll go up, visit our daughter, and my brother-in-law Tony, who works with me, it's like, oh, can you come out, just, just drive out, look at the cows. Sometimes we need water, but it's only when it's like 85 degrees that we have to water every day. And it's just so easy working with it. It's, it's simplified everything. And I— and while they're working, they're making me money. And that diversity, you know, what's the hot thing in agriculture right now? Livestock. Cattle. Yeah, it just— and I don't even feed them. I don't have to feed them. They feed themselves. The little bit of money that I invested in a plant, a seed, is giving me so much. I always say a seed is the greatest technology there ever was or will be. Because I guarantee you, my dumb phone right here, if I don't plug it in after a day and a half, it's worthless. A seed can sit in the soil for 50 years, 100 years, and conditions are right— and usually when I say right, that means good, not, not bad, not mistreated— that seed can grow in weather, drought, rain, It can do amazing things, but we don't give it the opportunity to. That's— I have low ADHD, so if I jump around, I'm sorry, John Kempf.

No, no, this is— I don't know of a better ending note. Um, this— I'd love to dig into this conversation more, but the— see, you perceive this as being simple. And you've described how it's reduced— or rather, maybe a better way to say it is it's distributed your workload, it's reduced your stress. But while it has— while you're describing it as being easier from a workload perspective, how is it from an intellectual perspective, from a management and logistics and coordination perspective? Like, How do you keep it all straight in your head?

Okay.

Or maybe a, maybe a better question kind of related to that or superseding it is, um, what are the challenges that you see with a more diverse operation?

Well, I'll, I'll, I'll use an analogy. It's, and I've used this for since 2020, uh, or 19, no, 2017. I'm playing chess now. I'm not playing checkers. When I was a kid and when I was a young farmer, we were playing checkers. One basic simple move, but it always cost a lot of money. But hey, I stick the money in, I get that back. Now I'm playing chess, and now I'm thinking 2 years ahead, 2 years behind. And I do look behind every year because I want to know where I've come from and where I want to go. And, you know, on a chess— on a checkerboard, there's only simple basic moves. But on checker— on chess, I'm using all these different weapons, uh, you know, a knight, a pawn, a rook, a bishop, and I use them all. And that's really what I'm doing right now in agriculture is I'm using all these tools that God gave me. And 60% of it's plants and 40% of it's animals. I guess there should be that 1-2% of, uh, synthetics that we have to use, but I don't have to use near as much. I, I've dropped my— I don't do P and K applications unless it's foliar now. Uh, nitrogen, I've cut that way back down to 0.6 to 0.8. I'm melting urea this year for my first time. Uh, my good friend Grant Breckreiser, I think, has been on here too. Well, yeah, we were together here not too long ago. Uh, I'm just excited about how putting these things together— and you know what, I don't even have to get that much nitrogen this year because my diverse cash crop is so diverse. I don't have conventional corn, I have organic corn, which is worth twice as much or more than conventional corn. So why would I plant conventional corn? I did do conventional sweet corn. Well, that really doesn't take as much nitrogen. Sunflowers, that doesn't need as much nitrogen. And if I'm going to grow nitrogen, my organic ground, I, I just— I'm incorporating the beautiful red clover cover crop. Could it be feed? Yes. Could it give me nitrogen for a cash crop? Yes. And that's a balance I play. I That's a chess move that I have to— I'll go graze early and then get off it and give and take with Mother Nature. I, when I used to do organic ground, it used to be all alfalfa. We'd cut it, take it, and then that'd be for the corn crop. But now I went to, if it's transition, I don't take anything off that field. I graze it because I want those animals taking half, leaving half, giving back to Mother Nature. Really gets those nutrients cycling.

And so, yeah, given the transition that you've been on, it's remarkable to me how much I enjoy agronomy. We haven't even had— we haven't even had an agronomy conversation yet. But how has your nutrition management for your crops changed with the incorporation of the livestock and the COVID crops?

Well, like I said, I've cut back on the P&K. I really see myself going more to all animal manure instead of any synthetic, even nitrogen. I just, like I said before, when I try and do conventional methods in this regenerative world, and not that it doesn't work, but I see the negatives that happens with it. And so agronomy-wise, I want to try my damnedest, my best to make sure that the prior crop or cover crop is filling those needs. That's why that rotation after peas, I get that big multi-mix. It's like an energy drink for the soil. And then I, I can't do that for probably 4 years, but I want to maintain it and, you know, and feed it a good cup of coffee, which is literally a cereal rye. Every once in a while I can interseed, but You know, interseeding really relies on moisture. That's the number one thing for me. But the cash crops are always options.

And I think you hit the nail on the head. It's one of the things that Claus Martin speaks about so eloquently and one of the things that he is so good at. There's this old German agronomy textbook that he references frequently, which has this quote in it, something to the effect of the The science of good agronomy is all about making sure that the crop follows the correct crop or plant. It's all about sequence. It's all about how you stage one crop or cover crop for the next one that comes after it because you can do so much for disease prevention and for strong yields and healthy root systems and so forth simply by Putting things in the proper sequence.

Yeah. And you know, we used to have all these fence lines that gave a spot for our pest to go, go there instead of in the cash crop fields. And all those fence lines are gone. My first organic field, I combine, my dad passed away like 2 months earlier and my dad was a storyteller and I got, I sent everyone home that day and I put his CD in the combine. And I found out he told a story because he's a nationally known storyteller. I can still listen to his words. He talked about a day we were ripping out a fence line and he was stopped on the other field. And being the young, obnoxious, you know, go, go, go, go kind of guy back when I was a kid, he told a story about the history of that farm. And, you know, once that fence line's gone, the history of those people are forever. And as young, I didn't think much of it. I just thinking, oh, I gotta work till 3 in the morning to get this, all this stuff done. But I listened to that story and I cried my eyes out. And then 2 weeks later, you know what I was doing? I was out putting fence lines in for cattle grazing, and it was cold out, and I just laughed the whole time. I thought, oh boy, was he right.. And you know, we keep on wanting to tear things down, but man, when you start doing fence lines and getting livestock, and now I'm planting trees on all my fence lines, you're creating history. I'm, well, I'm creating history by creating an environment that's friendly to animals and plants. And yeah, that's pretty crazy.

Yeah. Creating a legacy. Tom, thank you. This has been such an incredible conversation. I've immensely enjoyed myself. What do you have, any final thoughts or anything that you'd like to express to our listeners?

Well, I will say, you know, I, I got to present the National No-Till this year, and I always throw this picture of me out putting up fence line, moving fence line with a case of Modelo beer and a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, and that's about it. And I always tell people, what's crazier, the guy sitting there drinking beer, or the— on this beautiful cover crop field? Or is it crazier that it was actually February 6th in Minnesota and I'm capitalizing on Mother Nature? We have all these extremes. I capitalize on that sun. And I think that's one thing that we are forgetting in agriculture is the environment's changing and take advantage of what, what you're given instead of just, oh, we can't do anything. It's like, no, have a cover crop growing, capture that sun. You can feed those animals. I'm feeding that soil life. Uh, never think that you can't do it because you can.

Anybody can.

Yep.

Thank you, Tom. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, and thank you for being here.

All right, thank you, John Kempf. God bless.

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.