Erosion, Soil Balance, and Cover Crops with Steve Groff

Hi friends, I'm John Kempf, hosting this podcast. I am passionate about developing regenerative agriculture systems that improve soil health, produce crops that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, and produce fruit of such an exceptional quality that we can have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. I've discovered that there are many people with incredible knowledge and information about soil and plant systems and how to develop regenerative agriculture systems. However, much of this knowledge and this information is scattered. It's found all over the place, Some of it has been published in peer reviewed publications, but there are many incredible stories and a lot of knowledge that has not been published and that hasn't been shared with many people. I started advancing EcoAgriculture in 2006 to bring this knowledge together in a more coherent fashion and incorporate it into products and growing systems that growers can easily put into practice. It's my personal mission to have these regenerative agricultural systems become adopted globally and become the mainstream, the status quo against which all other growing systems are compared. To help achieve this goal, I want to share the knowledge that we have learned in the last decade and make it available to everyone while we have developed products at AEA that embody the principles of regenerative agriculture systems and make them easier for growers to apply. This knowledge and these principles can be applied anywhere and when they are applied properly, they will always increase farm profitability and resilience to climate stress. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments or ideas, topics that you would like for me to discuss, Please connect on LinkedIn or on Twitter where my username is visionbuilder7 or you can also email me at john kempf.com I would very much like to hear from you and to hear your feedback. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and thank you very much for listening. Enjoy the show.

Greetings friends and welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. On this podcast we explore the science and practical application of regenerative agriculture ecosystems, how to regenerate soil health, crop health and quality, and very importantly, how to increase farm profitability. Our goal is to give you clear and easy to understand actionable information that you could implement in your operation. In this episode, I'm very excited to welcome Steve Groff to our show. Steve has been one of the leaders in the no till and cover crop space for several decades and has shared his work with many growers and many farmers all across the country and internationally. Welcome to the show Steve. We're happy to have you here.

Hey, thanks a lot John. I'm happy to be here. My pleasure. And I also appreciate everything you're doing for agriculture and glad to be a part of this discussion.

Thanks, Steve. Steve, you've had a very fascinating pathway that has brought you to the various activities and projects that you're working on today. What are some of the memorable moments that led you to where you are today?

Well, that goes back, I think to the early 80s when I started no till. And at that time it was only for one reason, that was to stop soil erosion. I had no concept, soil health or not much of COVID crops or anything. I didn't think it was right that the soil was eroding off my fields and every once in a while I had to close the ditches in order to be able to harvest my crops. And so that was my only motivation. It was just a nuisance. Plus I didn't think it was right. And I think that part of, I guess you'd say a feeling is valuable in knowing why I have continued to pursue what a lot of people call, you know, environmentally friendly practices and so forth. So a key moment was three years into no till, I noticed that my soil was beginning to mellow out. And that surprised me. Nobody told me that was going to happen. I didn't expect it. And you know, just standard thought is you don't till, the soil is going to get hard. And yeah, if it's addicted to tillage, it will. And what we know today we can transition from a tilled situation to a no till situation much faster than we could before. So that was a key moment to actually see that occur here on my field. The other thing was back in 1995, I was speaking as when I first started speaking and Dr. Ray Weil was in the audience and he was talking about COVID crops. And when I followed him, I asked the question in my speech, do cover crops pay? And he come up to me afterwards and said, I'd like to find out as well. Would you be willing to do some research on your farm? And that ended up to be 12 years of COVID crop research in my farm from 1995 to 2007. And on the fourth year of that we had a drought year. And where I had used cover crops, I had 28 bushels more of corn that year. Now it was preceding the previous three years. That was a key moment, key moment. And ever since that even though I still get the question today, do cover crops pay? I'm all in. I like to tell people, you can't pay me not to plant cover crops. I've seen the benefit. And then I'll just briefly say finally here in this John, that when the radishes came, Dr. Weil brought them to my farm and I was able to take that concept and develop a variety and establish the tillage radish that really became a spark plug for cover crop interest across the country. That's going back and now about 17 years. So to see the effect of that and everything has been a surprise to me and something that's been look back and think of. I have more of a gratefulness to discovering these, these things because everything I just told you about I wasn't really looking for, but it kind of developed right under my, under my feet almost. And to see that experience it, live with it and now really actively promote it and teach people is, is I consider it a privilege to have this platform.

Steve, I'd like to learn more about your experiences and observations with erosion both on your own farm as well as other farms that you've work. When we look at the USDA NRCS data for just for the state of Iowa, which is the one state that I'm intimately familiar with the data for the state of Iowa on average annually loses two pounds of topsoil for every pound of corn produced. If you look just at the corn yield numbers across the entire state and the soil loss numbers, it's two pounds of corn for every pound of, of, excuse me, two pounds of topsoil for every pound of grain. That is kind of an incredible number. When you extrapolate that out into feeding beef, that means that every quarter pound hamburger represents the equivalent of four pounds of topsoil. Wow.

I've never heard it stated that way before. I usually amused the tons per acre, but that's actually more compelling because it's more relatable to people. And you know, my, my comment to that and again with my journey involved in this is why, why? I mean we have so much technology and information now. We put a person on the moon what, 40, 50 years ago and we've done so many great things in technology, but we haven't solved this erosion problem yet. To me it gets me a little excited as you can tell, because it's just not necessary. Just last week there was more dust storms in Oklahoma, in Kansas, in Colorado, where they were concerned on the interstate about traffic issues because of blowing dust. A month ago it was same problem. They shut down ISO 70 from blowing dust. And then you have to say that's something you can physically see. What people don't see is when the soil is eroded with water. Yeah, we see dirty water, but it's kind of like hidden. You don't really see it leaving. And last year in the middle of May, there were two people killed in Illinois with blowing dust where there's pile ups on the roads and it just doesn't need to be. And I, I just feel that with the use of COVID crops, less tillage, no tillage, and judicious crop rotation, all this could be all but solved. And not only that, erosion is just a symptom of a bigger problem, not having a healthy soil. I mean, when you look at, we don't have so much of a runoff problem in this country, we have an infiltration problem. And learning how to basically, once we get to learn how to grow a healthy soil, how to create a healthy soil, what are the steps involved? And the COVID crops are certainly a big part of that. We weren't learning to do that. The soil is simply not going to blow. It's simply not going to wash away. And then we can start talking a little bit more technically of the soil aggregates and glomerulan that holds the aggregates together. All that stuff occurs in a healthy soil. And then we won't have all these problems. And it's just, it's just a big one of those many things in our mindsets that we're going to have to address. And I'm just, I guess you'd say, encouraged that with the, I'll call it the regenerative agriculture movement that's kind of emerging now. Some of this stuff is now being looked at by mainstream agriculture. So I don't want to get too far in my answer here, but I'm encouraged with what I'm seeing. So in spite of, you know, where we're at, I'm encouraged with the awareness and the direction we're headed here in the last couple years.

Do you believe that using cover crops and these regenerative farming practices developing. You mentioned a very key phrase that really caught my attention. We don't have a runoff problem, we have a water infiltration problem. And that rings really true because when you have good soil porosity and of course that removes both wind and water erosion to a very substantial degree or definitely has a big impact. I guess the question that I'd have for you is can we completely resolve erosion with the use of COVID crops?

It's not just cover crops. There's a lot of other practices go in there. To answer your question very directly, we can greatly, greatly reduce it. I don't want to say we can completely eliminate it because, you know, there are some events sometimes that are catastrophic, that happen. So, you know that some of that is. It is what it is. I mean, the Grand Canyon was eroded. I doubt if it was the lack of COVID crops. That's an extreme example. But cover crops are a key component. But again, we're talking about, you know, a healthy system. It's. Cover crops are just a part of the system because just using a cover crop is it. Got to go beyond that because really stepping back from the tools, which cover crop is a tool, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. How you manage that tool is very important. And I like to use the example of a hammer. You give me a hammer. I'm not the best guy to build a house because I don't. That's not what I do. You give the hammer to a carpenter, they're going to build a beautiful house, whatever they're building. Same with COVID crop, same with no till. Those are just tools. Just because you buy a bag of COVID crop seed doesn't make you a cover crop farmer. So we step back and we look at the principles.