Episode 89: Regenerative Agriculture, Cover Crops and Water Holding Capacity with Jimmy Emmons

Hi friends, this is John and this is the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we talk about agronomy, soil biology, cultural management practices and all the fun stuff that can contribute to regenerating our soil health, plant health and people's health. And I'm really excited to share the stage today with Jimmy Emmons. Jimmy has been an acquaintance of mine and become rapidly becoming a friend. He's been a pioneer in the space for a long time. Jimmy, I'm really excited to have you here today and to for you to share your story, tell us a little bit about your background and pathway, what your journey has been like and what brought you to the work that you're doing today.

Well, good morning. I live in western Oklahoma, born and raised, so I've been here all my life. We still farm the original homestead that my great granddad brought my granddad to in 1926. So we started no Tilling in about 1995, my wife Ginger and I on our own land. And you know, you and I know in the early days why that was good because it was carbon rich soil and they were living off the benefactors of that. But they didn't know what they were doing in far as degrading the land. They would never done that. So it's been a learning curve. And then we kind of peaked out in the early 2000s and I still didn't have the really big concept picture of regenerative ag. I'm a cattleman as well. And grazing.

What are the types of crops that you're growing? What does your cropping rotation look like? What types of livestock are you running and how has that evolved over time?

So originally we only farmed wheat and a little cotton in the bottom land and some alfalfa. Now we're up to about 14 different crops in about a rotation. That rotation been kind of upset here. Drought over the last year, year and a half. When you finally exhaust all the water out of the profile, it's challenging to grow anything.

Jimmy, as you've made this transition, working with different types, including different cover crops, including more crops in your rotation. Incorporating livestock, what changes have you observed in your farming operation? With soil health and with improved crop resilience, what are some of the memorable moments that really stand for you?

Probably the big aha moment was in 2012 after we put in our first cover crops for the second year in a major drought. We were in a D4 drought. We had soil probes in, moisture probes and temperature probes in the soil. And that's when we kept Some check strips of bare soil, much like my granddad and dad would really like. And what we found was where we had cover crops the following year. Our crops showed that big square that we left bare, and we actually had more water in the profile to work with where we had cover crops versus where we didn't. And that game changer for me, I understood then the principles and what we need to do. That was a real catalyst to start moving us forward at a faster pace.

John, you know, I've had this conversation a couple of times, and I find it so intriguing that there is this idea that has emerged, and I understand how it emerged, that the best way to conserve moisture for a wheat crop, in this case with dry land farming, is to have a bareland summer fallow. I don't know how many farmers I've spoken to who have either used a cover crop and found that they had more moisture underneath the COVID crop than they had the bare fallow, or I have this one remarkable experience in southwest Kansas, where this was an organic farm and Kochi got away from them. And so we chose to do something fairly heretical. We just let the Kochi grow, let it grow to 5ft tall, and then incorporated it, knocked it down with a disc and lightly disked it into the soil. And, you know, that section with the Kochia, everything else was dry, bone dry that summer. But when they went through with a disc to knock down the Kochi, the soil was almost too wet for the disc underneath the Kochia. And it's like, what are we missing here? What are we not getting? It's. Yeah, plants do utilize water, but bare soil also loses water faster, perhaps, than when it's covered by plants. So it's really intriguing to hear of your experience with that.

Yeah, we see that all the time. Actually. One year on a rented farm, we had mare's tails get away from us, and we're getting totally out of control. So I just let them grow until they went into flowering and started reproductive. And then we actually mowed that residue down and no till in it. And the moisture was amazing. Had a great crop following that. So it's. It's really amazing to watch that small water cycle and how that that water recycles in that canopy when that gets dense and thick with. With either weeds or a cover crop. I mean, you know, nobody wants a solid stand of koshers or mare's tails, but they do keep the land preserved. They keep it covered and. And it will build water in the profile. It's amazing what a root can really do.

Yeah. I've also observed these plants actually building water in the proof in the profile. Do you have any hypothesis of how that might work or what might be contributing to that?

Well, I still think it's like in the beginning, you know, there was just dew every morning. There wasn't rain. And I believe that that water cycling and plants circulating that water, breathing it in, exhausting it out and taking it in, and all the microbes that's feeding on the roots or extruding out moisture, plus all life forms like you and I and a microbe, the major gas that we exhale is water vapor. It's not CO2. So the more of you there are, the more water vapor you're exhaling into the profile. So it does add up. And it's amazing what that living canopy and plant can really do. It really turns it into like a semi rainforest, so to speak.

In some of my presentations and on webinars, I've shared this story that we experienced with alfalfa in the 2012 drought. I don't recall that I've ever discussed it here on the podcast, but the short version is that we had some farmers planting corn into standing alfalfa that they tried to knock back, not to completely kill, but to knock it back when they planted into it. And by the time the corn was tasseling out, the alfalfa was 4ft tall and in full bloom, and the lower leaves were dying off, and it was starting to go into decline because it was shading out. It was just this incredible environment filled with pollinators. There's lots of fun stuff happening there. But those fields went on to produce an average or higher than average yield in the various regions they were in. We observed this on three different farms in three very different locations, at a time when other farms in the neighborhood and the surrounding regions were producing 20 to 30% of an average crop because of severe drought. And a few years later, I think I learned what was going on there, that the alfalfa was actually bringing moisture up from down deep and releasing it into the atmosphere. And the corn has the capacity to pick up moisture from the atmosphere and utilize it and actually transfer it back into the soil. And so it makes me wonder. We know that different plants regulate water in very different ways. So some are much more capable of absorbing moisture from humidity in the atmosphere than others. Is it possible that Marestail and Kochi and some of these weeds that really thrive in these arid environments are particularly good at getting moisture from the soil? And would we be better off using them? As a cover crop than our, quote, unquote, cover crops.

That's what I was talking about when I talked about how that water was recycling. And I do believe that it's pulling it out of the profile down deep, but it's also putting it back through the cash crop just like you talked about. So, you know, that's a possibility. I mean, I think we have a lot to learn yet in plants and their complete cycle and ones that we should be using in dry areas and ones that we should be using in, you know, a 50 inch rainfall. I mean, I think there's a lot to learn yet about all plants and not, you know, we, we tend as humans to put categories and we label, you know, certain crops or cover crops that we think are prime and, you know, should be number one on the list. But are they really, is there other plants, is there other species that's outside that box, like a Kochia that could be used in, in a great context that would really help that water cycle?

You know, an example of thinking of plants differently. Fifteen some years ago, when I first started out doing consulting work, I was also working with dairy rations and balancing dairy rations, particularly for a group of grass fed dairies that we were working with, but also some non grass fed dairies. And we had this one experience. This was an organic farm. Due to high rainfall during critical periods, they weren't able to cultivate well and lamb's quarter got away from them. So they had this side corn silage field that had a pretty dense lamb's quarter population. And so they harvested when the corn was perhaps slightly less mature than ideal because they wanted to not let the lamb's quarter go to seed and get away from them. And that was the most valuable corn silage I have ever seen. Those cows performed extraordinarily well on it because lamb's quarter as an individual plant has something like 23% protein. It's superior to alfalfa in protein content. So now we have.