Jay Fuhrer discusses the 5 Soil Health Principles and his work at the Menoken Demonstration Farm

Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. This is John here. The intention and the purpose of this podcast is to talk about the agronomic science and the cultural management practices that have the capabilities of regenerating plant health, regenerating soil health, and ultimately regenerating public health and animal health, because that is, of course, what it's really all about. In addition to regenerating ecosystems and so forth. My guest for this episode is Jay Ferer, which I'm very delighted to have here. Jay has had quite an interesting life in the regenerative agriculture space even before it had that term, helping to lead the demonstrations at the Menokin farm and also having traveled around the world and spoken with lots of different growers and being able to bring all that information together. So, Jay, thank you very much for being here. I'm delighted to have you.

Thank you, John. I'm looking forward to it as well.

You've had lots of rich experiences. Can you tell us a little bit about your history and pathway and what has brought you to this point and to the work that you're doing today?

I sometimes wonder all those things myself. Sometimes I take a look back at it and I grew up on a farm that straddled the North Dakota, South Dakota state line. And so my dad's farm, which was my grandfather's, it was a homestead farm. You know, we still had the homestead document signed by President Taft at that time. And so it goes back a little ways. Not far when we're talking geologically, but it goes back a little bit for our history. And that gave me kind of an appreciation. My parents were products of, of the Great Depression and the Dust bowl, and they both were on farms as children. And so it's what we knew, it's what we did, it's what our relatives did. And altogether, you know, it made up that ag community. And so we kind of grew up in a manner that you helped others. When we got together to complete some work that made everything go a little, little easier. And so it was a rich experience when I think back on it, because it included animals. You know, my mother was in charge of the dairy, my dad was in charge of the cropping. He would not allow her on a tractor and she would not allow him in the barn. So we, we learned to, we learned to work at an early age. And it was the greatest experience on earth, complete with one room schoolhouse. So we walked to the, my sisters and I walked to the one room schoolhouse. I was the youngest in the family. By the time I got to the third grade. The one room schoolhouses in the Dakotas were being consolidated. But it gave me a little taste of it. That was kind of my start, I think from that I knew I wanted to spend some time in agriculture and at university. I originally thought my plans were going to be one of maybe the financial lending world. And so it was kind of my early thoughts on it. I had a background for it academically, but I also had soils background. And so I was so interested in farming in general and I loved all aspects of it. Even today. Something that I've always found difficult to deal with, John, is terms. And maybe it's because of my career in USDA where we always kind of labeled things, if you will. And I didn't like terms like conservation tillage because it's so contrary to itself and it's always almost sounds like an oxymoron. It totally is. And so you think about conservation tillage and it was always way more about the tillage part than the conservation part. And then we use terms like no till. Never liked that term because it was just about one item, one cog on a big sprocket. And so I didn't care much for that term. And then eventually we slowly got to terms like soil health and soil regeneration, which start to encompass the smart. So academically, after college I did take on a career with usda. You can say a lot of things about the federal government in the United States, but I never really had a bad experience in my entire working career. I always kept the cards on the table, face up and always was allowed to speak my thoughts and always was allowed to be at the table to help broker some things that could move forward in agriculture's best interest. And so that's kind of how I got started in it. And I had no intentions of staying 40 years with USDA. It just kind of happened and one thing kind of led to another and I don't think that's so uncommon. You know, you hear people talk about those things. I certainly experienced that myself. From that a learning process started that is still going on today. If you allow yourself to, I think you'll learn forever. And I think that's one of our virtues in life. I mean it's, it's so rewarding, so. But it's kind of how I got started. Yeah, yeah.

The moment you are no longer learning, then it's time to hang up your hat, so to speak.

Well, I can't imagine it myself and maybe it's because I'm a slow learner And I have to go through these. All these things that maybe other people go through more rapidly. I found that if I keep my mind open, that these things can happen. And then over time, I like to put them on the ground and observe them, and then we can start to monitor them a little bit and let them paint their picture. But, yeah, the learning part is fascinating. And this trail, I think that you've gone down and many others, in terms of soil regeneration, there's no apparent destination. The journey is second to none. I mean, it's a fantastic journey when.

We think about journeys. I've asked friends this question. Sometimes when you imagine yourself, there's. We sometimes hear the analogy of life being like paddling a boat down a river or paddling a canoe down a river. And so I ask people the question, when you visualize yourself doing this, being on this journey, do you imagine yourself paddling up the river or down the river? You know, it's an interesting.

I, too, have had this vision. When I'm paddling, I'm in an ocean. The vehicle I'm sitting in is very large. And I think it was an analogy of usda, because if you're going to change or make movement within an entity of that magnitude, you're going to paddle long and hard and hopefully with a lot of other people. That's how I've kind of envisioned it. I didn't really see it up or down. I just saw it, okay, we're paddling this huge vessel, but we want to move it a little left or right or something like that. Those are the wrong terms in the ocean, I'm sure, but in North Dakota, those are the terms.

So what? Bringing this forward to the work of today and for the last decade, how did your work at the USDA lead to the founding of Menoken Farm? And what's the scope of the demonstration work that you're doing there?

That's an interesting part. You know, the first time I ever talked to my. My colleagues in usda, I knew there was going to be a meeting of my peers. And I contacted management, and I said, I'd like a few minutes on the agenda, and I'd like to talk to him about something that we're looking at pursuing further. And I was politely told that if we get the real work done, we'll give you five minutes before launch. I said, I'll take it. And so a few minutes before lunch, I got up and I said to my peers, I said, we're looking at. I said, first of all, I'm pretty much done with treating symptoms. I said, I've been building huge amounts of structures, terraces, waterways, diversions, etc. And I said, I don't see the point in this anymore. We're not, we're not making any progress on this. It's just treating a symptom. Took me a long time to see it and to figure out some of these things. But with the help of the team, I said, we're starting to look at putting together some, some practices that would be more in line with treating the problem or starting to learn about the problem and talk to them a little bit about plant diversity and some of these things that eventually we started to put into place. They were very kind to me. Nobody asked a. Nobody said anything. And then I had lunch alone that day. And so that was kind of the start within USDA for myself and within NRCS as an agency. And they were very tolerant of me. But I was starting to lean into paddling real hard on one side of the big ship to make some kind of movement change and eventually, eventually had a lot of colleagues supporting it. But it was a huge change. And I think locally then we needed a place where we could put cover crops, where we could put different combinations, where we could do some cropping, intercropping, livestock integration, all these things that formulated out of the soil health principles. And the soil health principles were intended to be a starter kit. They were intended to help people like myself. I was a planner. I was a conservation planner, loved it. And so I spent my career on the end gate of a pickup at the edge of a field and with the client. And I love that atmosphere. And because everything is cards up on the table once the spade goes in the ground and there's no place to hide. And so you start looking at and then slowly unraveling. So we needed a place to observe what was going to work in our landscape, what would work in our neck of the woods. And so we wanted a place for that. And if you had to boil it down, John, I'd say we needed a place where we could go to fail and fail and learn and re establish and re observe. And it didn't have to be huge. You know, I like to. Everyone likes to keep their. No one likes to fail. But it's the greatest learning experience you'll probably ever have in your life and you won't have to write it down to remember it. And so I think the Minocan farm came out of that kind of atmosphere. A place where we could go to put all these Things on the ground. And then it became, how do we build back this landscape? We were already very good at dismantling it. So we had that part down. That's where the Menoken Farm, I think grew out of and how it got its initial start. And I was just associated with it here in Burleigh county. And I was associated with it from the beginning. And it's been the greatest ride imaginable.

What is the scope of the work and the monitoring and the discovery that you're doing at Menoken Farm today?

Well, I think, you know, one of the holy grails in agriculture is, you know, just take something like soil organic matter. Case in point. So in North Dakota, you know, we've been farming approximately, you know, this is probably one of the north and South Dakota, one of the last places that we settled in the U.S. and so you start looking at what have we done in the last 130 years. Well, agricultural wise, from our soils viewpoint, we removed a good half or better of our soil organic matter. And so you start looking at that. We know how it was built. It was built through very diverse 100 plus species per acre, native rangeland and with the animal component. And so we had the large, large herbivores. We had, we had the bison and numerous other animals all well documented in North Dakota because of the fur trade and the logs from the fur trade posts. Unbelievable amount of bear, brown bear, black bear, grizzly bear and on, you know, and then because somebody felt fashion was very important in Europe to have an animal skin on the top of your head. That was pretty much the demise of the beaver in North America. So change the hydraulic, change the water hydrology system and not to the better. And so we had all these things going on that was kind of animal removal off the landscape and then it was the prairie removal. So we had 100 plus species being replaced by one species at a time. No cover crops, fairly simple rotations. So we took the complexity away, which I think is kind of a human aspect. It's, you know, as human beings, we like to simplify and make something more streamlined and we call it efficiency. And so I think when we apply that to a landscape, it has some real devastating impacts. But I think it's not an abnormal thing for a human to do. So we started that process of how do we build it back? So 11 years now with 10 different cropping systems at the Menoken farm. Took a look the other day and comprised some of that information. So if you just took soil organic matter alone, the Interesting thing to me was out of those 10 fields, some of them lost soil organic matter because of what we did on those fields. Okay. So some have control areas on them and some have something we know isn't going to play out well, but it's a demonstration farm, so you let it play out. And then we had others that, you know, have done quite well. And so when I looked at those 10 fields and I said, what's going on here? From a soil organic matter, the field that had the largest gains was kind of interesting because there's an interesting story with it. But it was fields that we had set up one year of no till corn, conventional hybrid at the Menokin farm. There's no fungicides or insecticides or commercial fertilizer, but there is herbicide. Okay. And so I looked at that. So it was one year of corn, corn for grain, and fall grazed, managed fall grazing, and then the following year was a full season cover crop, usually for grazing. Usually around 10 to 12 species would be normal somewheres in there. And then it would be managed grazed, and then back to corn again the third year. And so it had the highest soil organic matter gains. And then of course, from that, you know, where your mind goes, why don't I take these two years and put them together and let's go with something wider on the corn row and let's put the COVID crop into the corn and fall, graze that fall, that winter, and we, we can accelerate biological time. And so that's the second phase of this that we're in right now. The first phase had played out alternate years. The new phase for that field will be combining. So what does that do? Does it go up? Does it go down? Does it stay? Let's monitor it out and see what happens. So it's things like that, John, that I think have been so important. They give you this vision of, you know, you can see it play out over time. And I think that's been really helpful.

I find it really intriguing when you go back into the historical agronomy literature. During the 60s and 70s, the consensus of the day was that the fastest way to build organic matter was to grow corn. And today we have developed a farming practice where the fastest way to lose organic matter is to grow corn.

Yeah, I think I look at it this way too, John. There is no such thing as an evil crop. Sometimes we put the crop in an awkward situation, and we've done the same thing with livestock. And there's no evil livestock, but sometimes we put them in an awkward situation. And so I'll give you an example. I have another field. There's 10 fields at the Noken farm. I have another field that the last three years has been in a corn bean full seed coating rotation. So you can do pretty much whatever you want on that field. And so I watched the PLFA, the soil biology. And so out of the 10 fields, my highest PLFA for our regions. Now this is, this is, I'm only comparing the ten fields to themselves for our landscape. So my highest PLFA numbers are 6,000 nanograms for us. That's the, that's high for us. And my lowest is 600. Okay? So I got fields at 6000, I got fields at 600 for that shot in time, that day last fall. Okay. And so when I look at that, then my next question becomes, what about the fungal component? What about the mycorrhizal fungi? What's that doing? So on that field that's at 600 nanograms, I got zero fungi, okay? And so I look at that and I look at the ones that are functioning at the much higher worker level, if you will. Way more workers and way more diversity of workers. And then I think in terms of what that field has done this previous year we were in quite a severe drought. We were at about 40, 45% of normal precip during the growing season. Early on we were at about 25%. And then by the end of June, we picked up an inch or two of rain. We're in a 16 inch precip zone totally for 12 month period. So when you take away about half of our, over half of our precipit, it gets a little tougher sledding. The ones that had the higher fungal component just didn't realize they were in a drought, whereas the other ones collapsed quite quickly because we have this man made acceleration with the drought. So when I look at the fungal component, it's so interesting. I think at the end of the day I said to myself, fungicides are extremely effective.

They really are.

They're extremely effective. And so I've looked at fields where we've just totally removed it within three years. Previous to that it had fungal component and then it dropped in that three year period where we switched to the seed coating with corn bean because I wanted a corn bean field to. Well, it's basically a control and it's basically something that help us know where we're at on the other fields. And so that to me is, you know, if a farmer has that information, he would see this, you know, help us see the puzzle.

The picture you mentioned earlier that you're using no fungicides and no insecticides, only herbicide applications. Does that mean that on your other example fields that the seeds are not coated, that there are no fungicides or insecticides on the seed?

Correct. As much as possible. Sometimes we have difficulty getting seed. We're not organic, but many times we end up buying organic seed to make this work. And so my normal corn, the cornfield I described earlier, John, that was alternated with the full season cover crop for grazing every other year, that would be a conventional hybrid, no coating.

So if I'm understanding correctly, you're inferring that the seed coatings with the fungicides are actually what are inhibiting the mycorrhizal fungi and lowering your fungal populations, is that right?

Well, I took it as, I took that as probably, you know, it's rarely one thing in agriculture, but I took it as probably one of the drivers that is making this more difficult. That particular field also doesn't have cover crops. And so when I take a cover crop out of the scenario, you know, we just lose so much of the carbon exudate. It just isn't occurring. And it's such a short period of time. That first one to two months of a plant's life that is putting some exudation in the soil before it kind of starts turning around and bringing everything to the grain. But that first, first two months is critical. If we had cover crops, I think we'd find a little stronger recovery in those fields. You know, we're kind of handicapping the field by taking away the COVID crop. It's kind of interesting for me because the first time I looked at cover crops, John, the first time I looked at them, I said, well, I think they're okay for you, but I don't want them. And I had to get my head wrapped around what they did, you know. So again, we take them out to a setting like the Menokin farm. We planted them individually and then we planted them in combination. And when we started to get into some severe dry conditions, the combinations flourished and produced a nice amount of biomass, whereas the monocultures pretty much dried up. I mean, it just dried up and died. But then we took a backhoe, of course, and we're in North Dakota now, so we got to find out here. So we took a backhoe and we dug across all the plots. And it's so interesting to observe the root mass in that four foot deep branch and the connection and the combinations connection of all the plants. So it's a learning environment. But then I got to the point where I said, okay, they're important. And then I got to the point where I said, okay, I think they're essential. I just don't think I'm going to build this thing back without them.

Yeah.

And so yeah, yeah.

When you consider this being a demonstration farm, you mentioned that you pulled PLFA analysis. What is the scope of the monitoring work that you're doing on each of these plots? How are you evaluating how the system is evolving over time?

Well, we use a combination of things. My favorite is the spade. A lot of times we say, oh you, you know, this is what you really want to use. Well, when a, a farmer first you starts that process, he doesn't really have anything to compare it to. So he puts the spade in the ground and goes okay, there it is. Well, okay, but what is that? What can I compare that to in relation? And so we've removed most of the native grasslands and so many of our states in the US they have little to no grasslands left. So that element's usually not available to them. But maybe a fence line is. And so if I'm working with a farmer and we're starting this process, we'll put the spade in the ground. I'll let him pick out a so called average field. I don't want his best producing, I don't want his worst producing. Bring me something that's kind of middle of the road and kind of dominant to a degree in size. And so we'll check out the fence lines. And if we have grasslands we can do that. And then all of a sudden this whole spade thing starts to evolve a bit more. And then my, my second item I'll do with starting with the new farm is I'll take out my aluminum rings and I'll do some infiltration. And I like to put, if I'm going to record it, I like to use about five rings and inch of water and I'll throw out the high and the low and average. The remaining three is what I typically do as a starting point. Now keep in mind these are two big items that I think can tell us a lot. And I haven't spent a penny yet. I don't spend money until it's necessary upbringing again. So we look at that and then I like to dig those rings out, flip them over upside down and shave them off and see if they are uniformly wet all the way across. So there's a lot we can do just with infiltration now we got malasol soils. I should be able to hold 8 to 9 inches of water, 4 foot profile in a mollisol. And if I start to look at this, where we actually improve the carbon levels, I'll hold more yet. And so we start to get a bigger bucket to hold water, as we say we make it larger. And so this has been, you know, kind of a starting point. And then if I can have a starting point for plfa, I like that because it kind of again tells you what you got. And then also if we're going to do something and work together, I like to archive the soils. So I'll take some soil, put it in a bucket with a lid and pop a couple holes in it and label it and put it in the bottom, put it on maybe underneath the bench, in the works, in the workshop and forget about it for a few years, you know, but invariably go back to it. It's fascinating to go back to it. And so, you know, those are some starting points. Plfa, we've used the Haney analysis for a number of years after, after it came out, I also did through usda, I followed up with a few different farmers for a three year trial on Haney. Analys first came out and so had some background with it and then started applying it to the Menokin farm as well. And I thought it definitely brought some things to the table from the viewpoint of inorganic and organic where we could get a much better look. And so I appreciated that. So all of these collectively, you know, they started to evolve on the livestock end. Nutritional balancer, man, what a tool that's been. So I can, I can see how those critters are doing. I've done a fair bit of work on grazing systems over the years and have a bit of a passion for it and the grazing system. You know, if we don't have breedback, we don't have a long relationship with that rancher. You got to have a high conception rate in the ranching industry or you're not going to go very far on that. And so that has to do with fat on the animal and body condition scores. And so just another example and virtually every plant, every cover crop, I've broken half over the years by weight and sent them in top half, bottom half to look at the difference in protein and energy between the two. And so we start to get an understanding that that top half by weight again, that's okay for the critter, but the bottom half by weight, the job of that critter is to Trample it to the soil surface. We have to have it trampled. And so, you know, you start collectively bringing different tools. There's no to me. There's never really a magic magical bullet. But if we have enough information, it starts to help us paint that picture. But, you know, John, so many times, sometimes we'll have groups come through and somebody will say, well, I want to reduce fertility. Well, I said, look at these 10 fields. Look at the biology on each of these 10 fields. Just at the Menokin farm, could you pick one out that if you reduced. And let's just say it was 10. Let's call them 10 farms. Okay. And it's their average PLFA on the 10 farms. Okay. And could you pick one out, sir? That would mean you'd likely fail. And can you pick one out that means you got a good shot at making something happen? Yeah, I said, I can. He said, I can look at that. And he said, I can see where if I have no fungi, and I got a really low starting point on the biology, I gotta maybe approach that a little differently than a field that has such a high amount of each, relatively speaking. And so it helps guide us a bit and take away some of that risk factor. And listening to your own presentation the other day at no Till on the Plains, I saw some similarities in your approach on what you've done so many times with your clients. And so you. But you've got some background information, you know, certain things that help guide this process.

So it's always best not to guess about things that it's possible to measure.

Well, and also, you know, you're. You're working with somebody's livelihood.

Exactly.

And I take that extremely seriously. I'll give an example. When we started with COVID crop combinations 2006, throughout the use of the Minoken, that was actually prior to the Minoken farm, but we had a little, tiny Minoken farm at that time. It was like five acres, and then eventually it became 150. But even then, Adamir Kaligari, the crop consultant out of South America, listened to his presentation. And I remember thinking, wow, we got so much time where our sunlight is just hitting bare ground. It's not hitting a green plant. I know it's North Dakota, but I think we could do this. It's just finding the how, finding the fit, and modifying some things to fit your landscape. And so we started those combinations, and what a learning experience they were. Such a difference in soils. Yeah, absolutely.

When you have been conducting these PLFA analysis and looking at infiltration rates and doing all these types of. Of assessments over the years. What has really stood out for you? What was unexpected?

I think what was unexpected initially, John, was that we had become so accustomed to a degraded soil that this is how it is and this is how they function.

We've accepted a new normal.

I know we did within USDA stuff. This is how it is. And I remember my first visits with the soil scientists that were working on web soil survey, for instance, that we need to include soil health and web soil survey. And I won't say they laughed me out of the room, but it might have been close to something like that. I think they politely waited until I walked down the hallway, but the initial discussions didn't go well. As time went on, this started to change. And if you go onto web soil survey today, keep in mind, now this is the largest natural resource database in the world. So there is huge amount of information in it and more coming. And so the interesting thing to me was this was the start of the process. But now you go into web soil survey to now today you're going to find the soil health section. Okay. And so this is. This was a great start, I think, internally. And so we didn't. We didn't think that soils were. I'm speaking for myself now, we didn't think that there was going to be this huge change, but the change was beyond anything I imagined. And so I was used to putting structures in on these soils. I was accustomed to these soils. And then one day I said to myself, once we had some systems on the ground, we had some cover crops on the ground, we had a little managed grazing with them. I saw some interesting. Observed some interesting things. So one of the things I observed was if we were in a runoff area to a pond, it lowered the level of the pond. So now all of a sudden, our ponds, our dugouts, are dams, if you will, that were for livestock somewheres on the farm. The elevation levels lowered. Even the wetlands went back into their banks, maybe even a little smaller because our water now was being used in the. In the profile. And instead of evaporating water, you know, normally in North Dakota, you manage your water with tillage. And so it would evaporate, utility would evaporate. And it wasn't managed through transpiration. And so this was a whole different scenario because now we were running our water through transpiration instead of evaporation. And so we were hydrating our soils and we were covering them. And the difference it made when you put a spade in the ground and to this day, I still marvel at it. But when I look at a well aggregated soil, it's like, wow. I mean, this. I know, you know, maybe I need more of a life, but that's exciting when I see that occur, when I see that occur. On the profile with the farmer, they had a client here this number of years ago, but the first time he observed, made some changes, added all these items, and then observed the first time ever earthworms in his fields. He almost dug up the entire field, you know, with the speed just looking at them, because it was so exciting. And so I don't think we envisioned, I don't think we saw this coming. I don't think we. I think soil degradation is so subtle. I think that's one of the reasons why it's brought down so many civilizations over time. When we look back historically, I think that's one of the aspects.

It's a classical example of being the frog in the water when it heats up slowly, because it does slowly. And I think I've many times mentioned the aspect that we have forgotten what really healthy plants look like anymore. And what you're saying is we've forgotten what really healthy soil looks like anymore. And I'm always so intrigued and impressed and amazed at how rapidly these systems recover. When you think about all the degradation that has been inflicted on many of these ecosystems, they're incredibly resilient and they come back so quickly. It is really. It's a lot of fun to watch.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's where the excitement is. You know, I. This is going back in time a little bit, but I was involved in highly erodible land. 1985, the highly erodible land legislation came about through the Farm Bill. And NRCS is charged with implementing Farm Bill. So I was working on implementing ETL plans. Okay. And very short period of time. And our mode at that time in the 80s was full tillage, no cover crops, no livestock integration and limited crop diversity. Okay. Tough landscape, lots of erosion. And so we, we went ahead and we did those plans and it was very controversial. Every day was really a difficult day because there was huge pushback, you know, regarding this conservation planning effort on HEL in this really short period of time. Okay. And so I got a good look at that end of the spectrum where you're going to force it, if you will. Okay. And then such an interesting thing. Once we moved into soil regeneration with the same group of people, very same farmers, it was a more of a, we better have a cup of coffee. At the table and talk through this a little bit, and then we'll go to the field, we'll look at all this and we'll see where we're going and we'll write out these goals and what. Where we want to try to go. And. And it was. It was a huge reversal. You know, I've been fortunate in my career, I guess that's fortunate to be able to look at both ends of that and see both ends of it. And so we can go ahead and pass legislation, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen on the land in the manner that it's looked at on paper. Okay. Or we can do something more constructive and we can build. So my point is, when you have soil regeneration, it's exciting and the landowner is excited, you're excited. It's building something. And not only that, but it's building in the right direction. Whereas if you go off on the other end of it, it's a tough uphill battle that I don't think ever really materializes on the ground.

I've come to the conclusion that regeneration, or perhaps I should use the word transition, transitioning to a different form of agriculture doesn't really happen in the field. It happens first in our hearts and minds. And that's the difficulty with forcing an approach, using legislation.

Yeah, yeah. You can't put it into every client's mind magically. You know, there's a process and there's. There's a trust factor and there's a team factor, and there's a. I think both you and the client understanding each other of what's in your mind and your heart and your soul to that degree. I think those things are important that have to happen somehow.

Jay, you've had a lifetime of experience and over that lifetime have developed perhaps a different perspective on agriculture than what is commonly considered the mainstream view, or at least what was the mainstream view of very few short years ago. What is something that you believe to be true or that you have a different perspective on than the mainstream view?

When I look at. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna join and team up with farmer somewhere, doesn't matter where. I'm gonna do a little homework and I'm gonna start with the geology. And so I want to know what the geology landscape looked like. And, you know, I'm gonna just use as an example the northern plains here, because it's where I've spent my career and where I'm comfortable. I'm going to give you an example. Let's Just take the Missouri River. Missouri river used to run to the Hudson Bay. And so it drained all of North Dakota, drained to the Hudson Bay. Okay. And then one day we had these things called glaciers come through and they decided, no, that's enough of that. We're going to change some of this. And so now the Missouri river was forced to go south. And so I want to know how this was. I want to know if you had glaciers, because they restart our soils. And so in North Dakota, we've been fortunate. We've received a lot of soil assistance from Canada geologically over time. And so there's a big difference when the soil has been either volcanoes or in this particular case, a glacier, whether they've had that impact or not. And so there's parts of the US that have, there's parts that haven't. And some have had very little in our situation here, they're estimating, but it's probably at least a half a dozen times, if not more over geological time. That's a huge starting item there. Because if I've got a soil like a mollisol that's been glaciated a number of times, I got something pretty good to start. So I want to know what happened from the geology viewpoint. And in the last 10,000 years, we know that, yeah, it got populated with native grass plants and in our, our area, huge amounts of animals, especially the bison. And so we know this occurred and we know that built these soils and it gave us a huge start. And then we know we've simplified it. So what was approximately 1871 through 78, right in there, we decided that the bison have to go, and so they were taken out in a very short period of time. A really interesting book on that is called the Buffalo Harvest by Frank Meyer. And there's a lot of romantic thoughts about the bison herds and all this. He probably does a better job of factually telling us what was on the landscape. It's a brutally honest book. And he himself shot huge amounts of them. And so it was an interesting book to read, how they behaved, always in smaller groups, etc. And then after the buffalo were taken out, I always kind of suspected this, but I never could really find the right book. He talks in there about the group that came in behind him. So the group that came in behind him was the group that put cyanide and strychnine on all the carcasses and took out the wolves, took out the coyotes, took out that whole entire group. And so then after that came the people with the wagons and all the bones off, and they were shipped east and used for fertilizer and sugar refinement, different things. And so now I'm starting to understand, okay, I'm starting to understand my process here and what happened geologically a little bit, and then what happened before pre European settlement. And I think another thing that helps me understand is with the European settlement, colonization, what does that term mean? You know, when I was in grade school, that term to me meant we just magically came here and nobody else was here, evidently. And we said, okay, we're going to go ahead and start farming here. You know, it probably wasn't quite like that. So if you read the history of colonization, it's kind of a brutal one coming out of what European countries probably considered a bit of a necessity because they had outgrown their surroundings a bit. But Cecil Rhodes would be a classical one that would come to my mind. If you read his quotes, they're brutal. Colonization to him meant you went to another country, you took its resources by either enslaving or forcing the local people to move those resources to your country, and then you would bring back anything you didn't want or even people you didn't want. That's colonization in a little bit more of a brutal form. It's a little more than what I grew up in grade school learning. And so you look at that entire scenario. So we kind of went in with that mindset and we started taking these resources, the animal resource, and then we took the prairies out and Bonanza farms again in North Dakota. So the Bonanza farms produced some really nice yields and went. And with time, eventually they were then decreased, but then they were sold off to individuals in small parcels. So that's a business plan that only made money, but it made money by extracting from the landscape again. So we understand some of these things that occurred, and then we understand how do we build back. And so if we know how it was built, it's so helpful to know how to reconstruct. So then you look at all that and you go, okay, I'm going to put a cover crop on. Well, am I going to put a monoculture or am I going to put a polyculture or what? You know, what am I going to do here? Am I going to hay it off? Am I going to graze it? What's going on? So you look at that and then you say to yourself, here's an opportunity to look, lean into diversity. So if I'm going to put a cover crop in, in My environment here in the northern plains, I'm probably going to try to shoot for a pretty good size polyculture, something reasonable with the means I have to do it and the labor I have to do it. But it would tell me why I, why I want to go and lean into this diversity. I had 100 plus species. Why would it be odd if I put in age or, or 10 on a cover crop?

It seems odd that you would only put in eight or ten.

Yeah, we had a client in the county when I think one day went up to 50. And so, so, so, you know, you find your, find your comfort zone. When I looked at that, you know, these are all things. So then when I, if we're going to bring in livestock, do I want to put them out on a quarter section or do I want to put them into a smaller area and move them more frequently? Well, again, I look at what built the soils and the animal populations that were dense and then long periods of recovery. You know, the one thing we know about bison is they probably did something different every year. That one I can agree on with everybody. But we know we had this animal impact. Okay, so let's bring in that animal impact. So we go back and we look at what happened geologically and pre European with all of our, you know, we got Lewis and Clark journals and we got all of these. We just have to read them. You know, if I took a less than an hour walk, I'm at the Missouri river here and that's where they were. And so it's relative. It's relative to here. And they described that when they were between Pierre, South Dakota and Bismarck, North Dakota, when they were in that area, in that particular vicinity. The interesting thing was they said at a single glance they would see thousands of animals at a single glance. Now that's hard for us to envision. It's a well documented journal. And so you look at all those and you build this process back. And I think when I look at a field, I think about landscape, I think about all of these things that have occurred or likely have occurred. I want to find out as much as I can about that before I start looking at it today, directly today and tomorrow. And so then I have a much better feel for what may be obtainable and maybe how to obtain it. And I think that's just part of my process of what I look at. But I like to start geologically.

When you spoke about colonization, it occurred to me that we can have a conversation about colonization on two different levels. With the quote that you provided from Cecil Rhodes. What occurred to me is that colonization doesn't just occur of other civilizations, but it also occurs of nature. That we are today extracting a lot from nature and putting the things we don't want back into nature as well. So that mindset hasn't shifted yet.

I think when we get to the point where, well, I think we should look at what our own goals are. You know, I have a personal goal at work, had nothing to do with usda, nothing to do with anything else. But my personal goal was I wanted to be able to farm forever. That's just a personal goal. Okay. So when I, when I connect with another person or entity, that goal is in the back of my mind. And I like them to know Michael so that they're not surprised by whatever. Here's the scenario. And so I think, you know, my parents taught me an appreciation for everything that's alive. I'm going to give you an example. Okay. My mother was in charge of the dairy, alright? Her goal, every milk cow should die on that farm. That was her goal, wasn't my dad's. He wanted to get them in a truck while they're still upright. But her goal was that cow should have a long, productive, stress free life and it should die on that farm. You know, then I think you start looking at so many things differently. And I think if you have an appreciation for life and there's so many, so many more things that you and others are bringing to light that how this life interrelates and how it functions and all of that starts to come together a bit more. And I think that helps us even further appreciate it when we first put cover crops in. I want to tell you something strange about a cover crop. It's not really strange, but I mean it's not what you would read in a cover crop manual. Okay. At the Menoken farm, we always have a cover crop combination one full season because the groups come any time of year and when they come they want to see a cover crop. So I generally have one field rotated through. It's going to be full season cover crop. I noticed that if I was having a stressful day somewheres, not that you ever would working for usda, but I would stop at the Menokan farm and I would get out and I would walk into that cover crop and I would close my eyes and I would listen and I would smell and I would just feel it and it's like it, it just was kind of a little helpful to me. And then when the groups Started coming through that started in 2009. I've seen groups do almost anything in those cover crop combinations. I've seen them lay down in them. I've seen them take selfies. I've seen their group pictures taken in there. I've seen them all kneeling and sitting down in there and talking to each other. It's a strange. Maybe it isn't strange, but we're not used to seeing that, you know, how many times do you see that in a corn bean field? Probably not too many times, but in a cover crop with all of the color and all of the sound and all of the connection going on, and the insect world, which then brings the bird end of it as well. And so you have all these birds flying in the field, you have all these insects, you have all the sound of all these pollinators. And I think it's kind of like a message of hope. You know, we can build this back and we can accelerate biological time a little bit with the combinations. We can, like you mentioned, we can make this happen quicker. So much came to light from, you know, 40 years ago. There was no conversation on liquid carbon exudation. You know, we knew there was carbon in the grain. We knew there was carbon in the residue. We knew there was carbon in the root map. We knew that, okay? And on a corn plant, it's mathematically about a third. A third, A third. The missing part was this liquid part, which is, you know, and I've read fair bit of research on it. You know, it's more difficult to put a specific number on it that a plant gives up 30% or 40% of its photosynthetic energy that goes to this. So there's a range. It's usually listed in ranges. Okay. But there was no thought given to that this would build our soil organic matters back. I mean, there was no conversation on this. This all occurred much, much more recently, you know, within the last 20 years, for instance, or even less. And so a lot of people helped bring this to light and illustrated it well. And then when we started gaining soil organic matter, well, the first conversations, John, were, well, that's not possible in our environment, Northern Plains environment. You cannot gain 0.1 a year. It's impossible. Can't do. Okay. And then they would send you the math of why you can't do it, and it would be purely on the decompositional part of so organic matter in terms of the plant. Okay. And nothing in terms of liquid carbon exudates, etc. When this first started occurring, it was like yeah, that can't be. But then somebody else made it happen, then somebody else made it happen, and then, and then after a while others stepped into it further that had some backgrounds in it and put some pieces together. And we've just gained so much information over the years. It's been very helpful.

I think that's happening more and more with growers accomplishing things or producing results in soils that aren't supposed to be theoretically possible. With our current understanding, both in terms of gaining organic matter, but also as we regenerate the carbon cycle, partnered with, that is included, the regeneration of the nitrogen cycle, if we manage it well and don't disrupt it. And we have worked with growers whose soils are gaining hundreds of pounds of organic, or, excuse me, hundreds of pounds of nitrogen per year. And that isn't supposed to be possible. And yet the data and the evidence suggests that it is. So we have to revise the theories to fit the facts.

I think, John, that's where you would hear people say something like, well, they made some changes and they've observed some things, and one thing they realize is one plus one is no longer two. And I think, you know, what we've seen is really, I think when I look back at it, the more degraded the soil was, the more it responded to our earlier efforts of traditional fertility management and those type of things. As the soil, as we mentioned a little earlier, as the soil started to improve and you brought life back into that soil, it started behaving totally different and again was not accustomed to that.

I've come to the conclusion that in biological systems that are well managed, one plus one more frequently equals eleven than two.

Yeah, it's somewhere in there and I think we have to be prepared for that, that there can be a bit of something that occurs exponentially that used to occur in increments at best. And so, yeah, totally different aspect.

I'd like to go back to your description of the way people felt and responded to these multi species cover crops. You know, this is, this is something that I can personally relate to very well on both ends of the spectrum. Sometimes I walk into a field that I want to turn around and run away. And then sometimes you walk into a field that has this really welcoming and calming effect. And that's essentially what you're describing as well as this calming feel of being in, being in an ecosystem that is, for lack of a better term, it's comfortable and it's happy.

You know, it's one of our senses. Sometimes my colleagues would give me a bad Time, because I always like to smell a soil. And I can tell a bit because I'm accustomed to doing that. So it was one of my tools I used as to help me find out where I was at. And so whether you smell it, see it, feel it, sometimes we need to use our senses because we're all. We're all connected on this thing when we look at that. And I've had the same experience. I go into a field and I see the surface rather sealed off. You can kind of see that immediately. Put spade in the ground. And I have a lot of trouble getting my spade in the ground. And I look at the root mass and there's a lot of J rooting. And you know, this is a tough environment. It's never seen a cover crop. It's never seen surface residue. It's never seen anything. That's your starting point. And now we want to work some magic on this field. And so you start looking at that. But that feeling that you have in your stomach, I think is your biology telling you that this is a difficult task and this is not. I don't even want to really be in the field. I want to be someplace else. I've had that experience. I've also had the experience of being on farms where I just didn't want to leave. Just felt right.

Yeah.

And there are so many, so many good things happening. You know, what we have happened so many times, I think, is we have farms like that that unravel something. Maybe it never got raveled or unraveled. Maybe they were just able to maintain what grandpa did or what dad did, and it was already on the right road. But anyway, it was a farm that was functioning at a high level. Don't even really care to leave that farm. And so you feel that connection. And that's the feeling of hope, I feel, because then you, oh, you know, you can go to another field. And I've never worried about how large or small a farm was. If I was going to work on it. Didn't matter to me what the size of the farm was because I knew even on that large farm, if we get one field done correctly, that's the big guidance. That's the important one. After that, I think then it becomes much easier to look at it on a larger scale. So I would always start with a field. Let's go ahead and change this. Let's do some monitoring so we know what the before is. And then we got some idea on an after. And we know if we're making some progress. But I can sense when that feeling is good. And so many times the family goes right. You know, the family is good. They seem to go together, you know, and not that there's any evil plants or anything like that, but you know, you can feel when that soil is functioning right. You can smell it, you can feel it. You can do all these things.

The entire ecosystem is happy. That's the simple way of saying it.

I think so. And I got one other observation I want to share with you on that. And it was the very first time that I was with a rancher and we had put on a full season cover crop on one of his fields that winter. He was going to winter graze. Okay. And so he was kind of known to have a little bit wilder cattle. They were used to a plane or helicopter over their backs far seeing where they're at. And so they were a little. They spooked fairly easily is what he told me. Well, anyway, the cattle came into that field that day. We're standing out there in our car hearts and our snow boots and you know, there's a bit of snow on the ground and those cattle are coming in and they're grazing, grazing these cover crops. We just stood there and eventually. And there was a few hundred head there and eventually they just kind of surrounded us somewhat and they just were milling around, grazing and extremely calm. And the rancher looked at me and he says, I don't think these are my cows. One of the best lines ever. So the same thing, I think was happening with his cattle. Yeah, they had a lot of diversity to choose from. And it was winter. They're good at grazing in the winter. And so they were in the. They were in their element that day. And they felt this calmness I felt, I could feel. I think the rancher felt it, but the cattle were so calm and they just kept coming closer and closer to us. They made it.