Rick Clark describes his journey to an organic, no-till operation | Cover cropping & weed control

Hi, friends. This is John, and this is the Regenerative Agriculture podcast, where we talk about agronomic science and cultural management practices that regenerate soil health, that regenerate plant health and livestock health and human health, and very importantly, also regenerate farm profitability. My guest for this episode is a farmer who's become very widely known in the last half a dozen years, and I'm delighted to have him here with me, Rick Clark. Rick, thanks for joining me. So glad to have you here on the podcast.

Oh, it's an honor, John. Thank you. I can't tell you and your audience enough how much I appreciate what you've done for this industry. So keep up the good work, keep bringing the good speakers, and keep the word flowing. So thank you.

Yeah, there's a lot of farmers and people with a really great knowledge and information in the world that the world deserves to know more widely about. And if I can facilitate that, that's really what this is all about. So, Rick, you've become much more widely known in the last half a dozen or so years. Your story is more widely known. You're doing really great work. What are some of the memorable moments that really guided you in this transition and going down a different pathway, beginning to farm differently?

Yeah, there's quite a few of those moments that, you know, you stop and say, wow, I'm glad I did this. And. And let me start with that right there. That thought right there. First, John, I am one of those people that I did not want to get to be 60 years old and look back and say, you know, I wish I would have done that. I was the type of guy that, you know, hey, I see something different. Let's go this route and let's see if it's going to work. And I'm glad I've taken that approach. You know, probably the most accomplished thing that I feel I've done is transform this whole farm to organic. Wow, that's hard.

Yeah, that is difficult. When you think about weed control and everything else, that's a big deal.

Yeah. And, John, we're also doing this without tillage. So I think of the. Of the six principles of soil health, in my opinion, that is the one at the top. We have to stop tillage, because I've seen it through the years. Yes, that tillage pass is going to take care of the weeds that you see at that point in time, but it's just germinating everything right behind you. And here we come with another flood of weed seed that was in that bank if we can stop the tillage, leave that weed seed on top, not only are we keeping those weeds up, those weed seeds up for degradation, rotting, you know, microbes, varmints, voles, whatever's going to eat on them, we're also helping build the soil health and keeping those mycorrhizal fungi communities intact. It's a systematic approach and that's just one of the steps that it takes. So getting the farm to organic was a huge milestone. And probably the second milestone would be absolutely stopping all tillage. I mean, when you think about how most farmers are raised and taught to farm, we're talking about doing this totally different now. So we have to remember also, John, that that myself and any of the other speakers you have have had in the past or are going to have on here. It's not about, you know, saying that what the farmer's doing today is wrong. That's not what we're here to say. It's that we're here to say, look, try a couple of these ideas and incorporate them into your current system and just see if it can augment what you're doing and head toward a more profitable roi. That's what this is all about. It's not about putting somebody down or saying they're doing it the wrong way. There is no wrong way or right way. Let's just try to incorporate all of these ideas.

What I find so interesting is that you use the words that this is a completely different system. And it is. It's a different system and it's a completely. It's a different mindset, it's a different approach, a different management system. And when someone has successfully converted to a completely different system, it appears to new people who want to go down that pathway to be incredibly complex because there are so many moving pieces and parts that they are unfamiliar with that are unknown to them. And yet the piece that I find so rewarding is that once people do start going down this pathway and they begin trying a few practices or doing things a bit differently, there is this rapid compounding effect, the synergistic effect, where one step seems to automatically lead to the next, and the transition isn't nearly as difficult as we might imagine it to be, as long as we're willing to take the next step.

You are exactly correct. That's why I stress that it is so critical that the farmer have success that first time they try this, because this is so foreign to them. They don't understand the complexity of this. But you're exactly right. It may appear complex on the surface, but actually once you get involved in this, it's, it's a much easier system to manage than you really think it is. But you have to have success that first time out. And these are things that worry me a little bit. John, we're going to talk probably later about carbon markets and I'm going to just put a little bit on the table right now and we can come back to this later. If you're going to participate in these markets, in my opinion, you're going to have to do some parts of the six principles. So health. You're going to have to. So if you're going to do this, you need to now be educated correctly on how to plant that cover crop. What species am I planting? When am I terminating? How am I terminating? What's your end goal? All of these things need to be figured out beforehand because if we just go out with a shotgun approach, it's not going to be good. And you're going to get some guys that are going to say, you know what, this worked for me. And you're going to get some guys and gals that are going to say, you know what, this is a total waste of my time. I told you this wouldn't work on my farm. That's what we have to avoid.

Ricky, I think you're the first person I've spoken with and this, this has been a mantra in our work at advancing eco agriculture, is that we have to produce immediate success, immediate economic success. And I think this is the downfall of so many advocates of regenerative agriculture is that the emphasis is on long term returns, that you're going to build soil health, you're going to have an improved crop response in the future. And that's all well and good, but many farmers are in such a difficult financial situation that there needs to be an immediate economic response. And so my question for you is, in your experience and the advice that you share with other growers, what's the pathway to making sure you produce an immediate response the first year?

Yeah, If I was to tell you what to start with, I would start with sail. Right. And soybeans. Okay. And I just would start so right by itself in the fall. And we have to, first of all, we have to sit down and we have to say, John, how are you going to terminate this? What? Where's your farm at? Are you still using synthetic inputs? Are you in transition organic? Are you organic? We have to determine the ground rules here. Okay, you know what, Rick? I've got some organic acres and I'VE got some traditional acres. All right, my suggestion would be, then let's start on those traditional acres that you still may be using some chemistry on. And the first thing I want to do is start looking toward reducing and or eliminating the burn down pass. The burn down pass is how you start into this process of starting to eliminate the caustic acids and all of these things that are being poured onto the soils and disrupting our ph and making everything get out of balance. Because I talk about balance a lot, too, and that's very important. But I would start with cereal rye planted in the fall and soybeans into that into the spring. And then I'll leave it up to you to decide how you want to manage that rye going into that growing season. But that's where we started. And then we also started with. Now we got to be careful here because some of the things we did, they worked, but we have to be careful. For example, the first way we started to reduce chemistry was we started coming off of the full label. So, but that's why I'm saying we got to be careful here. If we're not careful, we will not kill weeds, and we will have weeds then that are going to become resistant to that particular chemistry. But too many times, John, in my early days, when we were just getting started in the rye, was 6ft tall over my head. And the retail plant guy would come in and he'd say, okay, Rick, there's only one way to kill this. So, right, and we got to go 44 ounces of Roundup. And I'm going, we're going to do what? You're going to spray how much? And then I'm like, no, we're not doing that. Well, I just for myself had to test this, and I went out with 16 ounces of Roundup and killed it quite easily. So that is how we started to come down off of that. I'm going to call it dependency of the chemistry. Because that big old red easy button that you just push and reset and go spray, you got to get away from that guy. That button there, that's the killer. But you're exactly right, John, because you said it very well. Just please get started and get a taste of this. And then by years two and three into this, you will have doubled or tripled the amount of acres that you'd started with. Just because of the fact you see that this works. You don't need any more prodding to get you moving down the road. You are now trying to figure out, how do I Get this across as many acres as I possibly can.

On your point about reducing herbicide applications reminds me of an experiment that I did years ago, just testing with, to see what is the ultimate, that is really possible by using really clean water and adjuvants and everything else. And we got complete burn down, successful burn down with Roundup at 8 ounces an acre. And it's very achievable.

Hold that thought for a second, John. So now, you know, Rick's this wacky guy from Indiana that is full bore elimination of everything. That's very radical. Okay, I don't expect everyone to come with me, but now let's go back to what you just said. So now what we need to do, John, is we need to have somebody start a PhD thesis or something on how can we still maintain and build soil health while still using some synthetic help. So let's say that 8 ounces of chemistry is, is what you need. Now this knocks you out of the organic situation, but let's say that 8 ounces of chemistry is exactly what you need to maintain your clean fields, but yet you've not affected building soil health. That could be a big deal.

That's a really big deal.

And I think it's.

We've become so acclimated to these materials, these chemicals that our kind of our default setting is we think they're relatively benign because that's what we've been told. And I don't think we really appreciate or can appreciate the impact they have on soil health until we see some side by side comparisons of where they've not been applied. It's really profound.

That's right. And I just had another thought. I want to go back to the, one of the questions you previously asked me on these milestones. I've gotten to. And I'm going to tell you, I thought about this. Oh, it's probably been three or four months ago that I'm 57 years old and I am the first generation of farmers that have had my whole life around the synthetic chemistry. Okay, yeah, my dad, my dad started using chemistry, but he was in his 40s and 50s when he started. I'm talking about, I'm the generation that my whole life has lived exposed to these chemicals. And I said to myself, you know, I'm not only going organic for the, the fact that I want to do this, I'm going organic to build better human health because I am not going to expose the generation that's behind me. And now I have grandchildren and I am not going to expose them to those harmful synthetic fertilizers and in harmful chemicals, pesticides, insecticides, all of these harmful things. So we now are going to head into year eight of eliminating all of those attributes in our system. And I'll tell you, that might be at the top of my list because of the human health factor.

Yeah. So I want to come back to that because that is such an important piece that, well, we can talk about it for a bit. There's this old saying that we're all familiar with. You are what you eat. And if we believe that to be true, then that gives agriculture a tremendous responsibility. Because while I believe it's true that we are more than just what we eat, we are also what we drink and think and breathe, agriculture does have a great responsibility for the quality of food that people eat and also for the toxins that are in that food supply. And when you look at the public health epidemic that is present in developed nations around the world, but particularly here in the United States, the 1 number, I mean, we're all familiar with the ridiculous numbers on cancer and heart disease and so forth, where we're now approaching half the population has major degenerative illnesses. But the number that really caught my attention a few months ago was autoimmune diseases in young people under the age of 20. In 2010, it was 5% of the population. Today it's 18%.

We're supposed to be the number one nation in the world. And those don't sound like good numbers.

Well, they're number one in the wrong thing.

Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and dive right in on this now, John. I have been a hypocrite to myself. I've paid a price for that. And I want to talk about that. I have built the last 17 or 18 years of my life toward building soil health. And I've not respected my own human health. And the foods I ate were wrong. The diet I was on was wrong. The drinks I was drinking was wrong. And that has now sent me in to be a type 2 diabetic. And because of that, my lack of taking care of myself and my lack of going out and searching for that healthy food to consume, I'm now become diabetic. But now here's the good news. The good news is now that I'm aware of my situation, I have now reversed everything, changed my diet exercised, eating more nutrient dense food, eating less carbohydrates, less processed food, less sugar, all of these things that we love to eat. And I'm now no longer on insulin And I'm no longer on any medication, and I'm controlling my sugar levels with my diet. This can be done. And I've lost £15. And, John, I feel the best that I've felt in 25 years.

Rick, that is an amazing story. And, you know, when you speak about being hypocritical, that's actually something that's worth talking about. For those of us who are passionate about the regenerative agriculture space, it's so intriguing to me how, you know, the Midwest is referred to by the people on the coast as being a good food desert. Mm. And it is. It is a good food desert for the most part. It's. It's really intriguing for us in our work at advancing eco agriculture, we want to work with people who share our values, who care about the things that we care about. And some of the things that we care about are the things that you just mentioned. Making sure that we have good food and drinking good water and taking care of ourselves. And all of us on our own personal journey. We're all at different spaces. But one of the frequent conversations that we have within our company is how difficult it is to maintain a good diet when we're traveling through the Midwest visiting the farms that we work with. It should be the opposite.

That's right. You know, and I'm going to tell you, not only are these food sources difficult to find, John, but they're more expensive.

They shouldn't be. We want to pay farmers more, so they should be more expensive.

That's right. And I'm okay with that. I like to go up to 50,000ft and look down is what I like to do. And I'm trying to figure out a systematic approach that's going to be viable for the next generation and the next generation after that and for anybody else who wants to follow what we're doing. I just told you, I'm 57. I feel like I've got 13 more tries that. I mean, that'll put me at 70. Now, I'm not going to quit at 70, but I'm just saying I think my mind is still solid. I think my health is still solid at 70. So I've really got to keep plowing ahead. Well, I don't want to use that word, plowing, because I don't do that. I want to keep going forward as fast as I can. But we cannot jeopardize the livelihood of the farm either. So these things that we're doing, I get some crazy ideas, but I don't go out and do these crazy ideas on a thousand acres. I go out and do them on 100, and then we see what that acre looks like, and maybe we do it again for a second year, and then we roll in and start going large scale with it. So there are so many smart people out there with so many good ideas that we just have to keep building the community. And that's what you've done here with your podcast. You've built. Think about who you've had on this show and think about the community that's being built now. That's because we can't do this by ourselves. Now, I don't have a lot of people that I can talk to about what I'm doing, because I don't know of too many people that are doing what I'm doing. But that's okay. There's more and more people showing up all the time. And then if I can go speak somewhere and I can shave five years off of the struggle, off of somebody's timeline, that's a victory. And that keeps that farmer in the game and keeps them, you know, keeps them going. One of the happiest things that I get happen to me is I'll be out in the field doing something. I'll be planting corn, and I'll get a text on my phone and I'll look down, and it's a number I don't have a contact for, so I have no idea who it is. And then I'll open it up. Hey, Rick, this is so and so from so and so. And I was. I've been to two of your presentations. You taught us how to do this. I'm doing it, and it's the best. The best yielding beans I've ever had. Thank you for your help.

That's incredible.

That right there is what it's all about. Now, it's not about the best yield. That's not what that was about. But it was the fact that he listened or she listened, and they had success and they're willing now to move on and take it across more of their farm. That's what this is all about.

Yeah. It's so rewarding to get those messages and so rewarding to be a part of a community. And while we're on the topic of community, I would be remiss to not point out the vibrant online community that we have on kindharvest. Kindharvest Ag for all of our listeners. You want to be there. There is no other platform that has similar conversations to the one that Rick and I are Having right now, let's go back to the When I ask you the question of what is the, what's the first step? Or what is a fairly certain first step to ensure we have success? The first year you emphasized figuring out how to manage the burn down pass and doing rye before soybeans. So obviously you're now farming organically on several thousand acres. What has this process and this pathway been for you? How have you manage your burndown past and transition it over the last decade or so?

John I've been very blessed in my life in many ways. And one of the ways that I've been blessed is by meeting the right people. And Dr. Aaron Silva is one of those people from the University of Wisconsin. She was going to put on a seminar and the headline on the seminar said something like this. How would you like to learn how to plant beans into sir riot boot stage and roll everything down 45 days later with a roller crimper? And I'm like, you're gonna do what? I'll be there, got my truck, drove to Madison, Wisconsin. And I'm gonna tell you what John, Madison, Wisconsin in January is cold. But anyway, we were there and we were there with probably 40 other farmers. That's where I first met Lauren Steinlogge, another farmer going down this journey. And we have become very good friends since. But anyway, she probably is the largest segue into the organic that I've had that influence because what that did, we used her practices on our farm for four years before we started to make the transition to organic. And that's when I knew that that that's how we were going to transition because we were able to suppress weeds and grass with that cereal rye concept of planting the beans into the rye at boot stage, coming back 40 to 45 days later at anthesis and roll everything down. When I saw how well and how quickly, well, first of all, the first year out of the box, we eliminated the burn down. The first year we tried this, we then continued to spot spray. And I wish now I hadn't have done that. Year two, we're into this on more acres. Again, no burn down now, half of those acres, no post spray. Year three, it's all the way. And then I'm saying to myself, why aren't we going organic? Because we're almost there. So that's what we did. So that's when we started transitioning into organic. Now let me back up a little bit though. We got to be careful here that we don't fall into a monoculture with our Cover crops like we do with our cash crops. I've been saying rye, rye, rye, rye this whole time. That's not good enough. You have to have the opportunity to add as many species to this as you possibly can. And the only way you're going to accomplish that is to get this to happen earlier in the fall. Well, there's only a few ways you're going to get this to happen. You can shorten your relative maturity for cash crops, that's one way. You can plant more cereal grains, that's another way. And then do not double crop a crop behind that cereal grain. Give yourself that opportunity now to put that massive cocktail out there and get ready for next year. Cash crop, or I like to use the third way as grazing livestock, because now you're in charge here. You can bring those cattle off, or sheep or whatever it is your animal is. You can bring them off that acre and then move them to somewhere else and dedicate that cocktail to that acre at the right time of the year. So, yes, I've said rye and soybeans, but that's how I want you to start. And then once you get more comfortable with this, I want you to start thinking about how to bring the diversity into this as time goes on, because we have to have diversity to make this system work.

Rick, one of the recurring challenges when people think about going down this regenerative agriculture pathway, one of the conversations that keeps coming up just over and over again is weed control. How do I control this weed? How do I control that weed? You've been very successful using cover crops with the roller crimper. Where does that not fit?

Yeah, that's a good question. I will admit also, John, that now I no longer use the word failure. Failure is too negative of a word. I've taken that out of my vocabulary. And also what I want to say here is if you have negative people around you, you have to get rid of those people, somehow get away from those people, because negativity is a bad thing. It will drag you down. And the reason why I'm going into this at the moment. I will come back to your question. I have been through the Alphabet, John. Once I've done through all the small letters and plans. I'm now on capital letters, and it's November of 2021. So you reach a point where. Where you say to yourself, what in the world am I doing wrong? How come I cannot? But that's the way Mother Nature rolls. She will humble you at every corner of every turn you make. So be prepared for that. So now back to your question. Now, there are situations that we just simply cannot overcome. At least I've not figured out. And mother Nature is number one. And what I mean by this is weather. I cannot dictate. When we get 19 inches of rain in 19 days. That is too much. And that's what happened on our farm this year. So we had intentions last fall of planting our cocktail that had the legumes that I wanted to be in it to feed the corn crop for next spring. So, okay, I'm talking fall of 20 and now I'm talking spring of 21. Those legumes did not survive the winter to the degree that I needed them to be there. Meaning there wasn't enough biomass, there wasn't enough nitrogen that was fixed. I was too stubborn and I thought that I had enough fertility in the soil on its own to raise at least 60 or 70 bushel corn without the help of anything. Now that may not. You're going to say, well, Rick, why in the world would you think 70 bushel corn is good enough? Well, when I'm selling it at $10 a bushel, that all of a sudden kind of works out. Okay, so I was too stubborn and I went ahead and planted the corn, which was a mistake. It wasn't a failure. It was an outcome I didn't expect. That's what I say, outcomes I do not expect or unintended consequences. Okay, the corn comes right out of the ground. Away we go. It starts growing. And now the rains come. We get 19 inches of rain in 19 days. We've absolutely pushed all of the oxygen out of the ground. The profile's full. The corn suffocates, drowns and is died. Okay, you got to go to plan W now. So now we plant soybeans. And you gotta now have to look at this, John, in a realistic view. What is your realistic yield goal for raising corn or raising beans in this system? Well, my realistic yield goal on soybeans is 35 to 40 bushel. My realistic yield goal is 130 to 140 bushel. Now I said realistic, would I love to raise 200 bushel corn? Yes. Can we realistically do that year in and year out? No. But I think where we are now, we can, we can work at these numbers and work toward improving that. Okay, so now with all that being said, now you, you look at, we planted beans into that corn that was dying in July, July 19th and 20th. We're now going to harvest those beans. I hope, I hope within two Weeks sold at a very high price. There's a huge demand for organic soybeans right now. So we're feeding into that market and it's going to work out. So is it exactly perfect? No. And this also, and I apologize, John, I have a very fragmented mind. If I get something, I gotta go with it. So I'm going. Here we go. We can no longer look at single year snapshots in time of your system or a field in particular. We have to look at the average. So all of my neighbors here plant two crops and I don't even call that a rotation. They just plant two crops. It's corn and soybeans. We are now up to seven. So what I do is I look at that field and okay, my neighbors drive by, they've got their nose turned up at me, they're saying, what is that fool doing out there? He doesn't know what he's doing. That isn't going to work. But guys, you got to bear with me here. Yes, that field is not exactly what I want. But, but come back to the farm, on other parts of the farm and we more than doubled what I thought those acres would do. And when you bring the whole pile together and take that average, it all works out. So yes, I'm looking at each field to dive deep with the data to figure out why did that field do different than this field. Yes, I'm doing that in a single snapshot in time. But when we look at the ROI of the farm, I'm taking the average across the whole farm, I think too many times, we're not looking at it that way. We look at it as that one 80 acre field did not do what I thought it was going to do and I'm never going to do that again. So we got to get away from that.

Your last comment. I'm never going to do that again. It's much better and much wiser to try to figure out, okay, why didn't it work? Why does it work for this guy over there, but didn't work work here? And I would submit that in my observation, in many cases, not always, but in many cases it's because of annual conditions that this year was different from last year, the year before. It's not. It's not so much about regional variation from one region to the next, although that does exist, but it's often about annual variations in rainfall and so forth that result that influence the outcome.

That's exactly right. And that's what I'm talking about. You've got to Take that average of this now. So we are looking at when we sit down and do. And that's one beautiful thing about being organic. They require you to do a plan for the next three years. So that is a great way to figure out. I mean, I've got a spreadsheet, John, that will show what cover crop package I intend to plant in 2024, for example, on whatever pick a field. So you have to have these plans in place, but you also have to be willing to change those plans because mother Nature will do whatever she possibly can. I mean, for example, I'm going to go into another quick story. Same thing happened again. That rain came and it hurt that crop. Okay? Then we roll into two weeks of 95 degrees and 98% humidity and absolutely roast the crops that survive this. Okay? So we've had an extreme roller coaster of weather in this region of the world right here. Same thing happened this fall. We are ready to start heading toward those soybean fields that are in a rotation to be corn next spring. I've got to get those, that hairy vetch and that, that clover planted asap. We get two weeks of rain that amounted to almost six inches. So now I lost my whole window of opportunity to plant those legumes. Now we're into the capital letters like I was talking about because I've ran through the Alphabet now. So now you start thinking about what are options that we can do here. And the first option that comes to my mind is a cold tolerant pee because now we've widened our window of when we can plant this legume. And I'm going to make the, I'm going to roll this into my next thought process if that's okay. I think that the future of success of this system is going to be to plant cash crops together because I think we're missing out on that, that symbiosis, that symbiotic relationship between a wheat plant and a pea plant, a corn plant and a soybean plant. This spring or next spring, John, I'm going to plant corn and soybeans in the same field together with a drill. We're going to drill it just broadcast, you know, not broadcast, but it's going to be seven and a half inch spacing soybeans and corn together and we're going to harvest them with a bean platform. So I'm out right now researching the shortest stature hybrids I can find so we can get them to come in with the real. But I think this is where we're headed because there's so many synergies going on here that we've, we've, we're missing the boat on corn, fava beans, wheat and peas, rye and peas, barley and peas, trader kale and peas. So now let's also roll this into the group of listeners you have that are dairy people. So if I was to go speak at Wisconsin, which I do quite frequently, I'm going to lay this out to these folks. I'm going to say, guys, you incorporate peas into your triticale and maybe four or five other species with the intentions of harvesting all of this together and separating it out. But if for some reason you can't do that, then take that as a forage and with that pea in there, raise your protein 3 or 4 points and, and have happier cows and better quality milk. Those are the types of things that I think about. How do we make this diversity work in our benefit?

Rick, I so glad you brought this up because I think this is a very important piece from so many different perspectives. We have this perception, or have this indoctrination, if you will, that plants are always necessarily going to compete with each other. But we know that that's not true. We know that plants can synergize and they collaborate rather than compete. And it's really interesting, actually, when you look at the science of how plants interact with soil microbes in different conditions. When nutrients are abundant, when the environment is perfect, you have perfect water and sunlight and nutrients and so forth, in that environment, plants will compete with each other. The moment you have a period of stress, plants begin collaborating. They synergize, and they work together. And we see this with what you're describing, with intercropping as it's done in Canada with flax and oats and peas. We see this with work that Jason Malk is doing. And the other aspect to all of this is, as we figure this out, not only is it almost a certainty that we will get higher yields as they are in Canada and elsewhere with intercropping. The other piece that will happen is you'll have a solid enough canopy for weed control.

That's right. That's exactly right. You know, you've mentioned, we've mentioned 2,0 farmers, and there's many, many more doing these things. We don't want to leave anybody out, but it's amazing. Progression is real here. And here's what I mean by this. If you were to take an acre out of product. Let's just talk about crp. If you were to take an acre out of production and put it in crp. What's the first thing that happens? The first two years, you get a massive explosion of broadleaf weeds. Then you come out of the broadleaf weed phase and you roll into grass. Then you come out of grass and you go into shrubs and then you go into trees. And I'm telling you, it's happening on the farm now. I think it's happening, though, for many reasons. And I'm going to give two of them. Progression is real and I've seen it. But I think what's happening too is the COVID crops are coming along and let's just. I love cereal rice. Let's just stay on cereal rye. Cereal rye is a tremendous sequester of nutrients. I've got charts that'll show it. We do it every. We do testing every year. I mean, what we're doing now, John, is we go out every Monday and we take a sample of cereal rye at the same location in the same field every Monday. So what we do is you go out, take a 2 foot by 2 foot square, clip everything off at the ground level, throw it in a bag and overnight it to your lab. Okay. Back come the results. All right. I think what's happening here is I do not buy into the fact that corn and cereal rye have an allelopathic effect against each other. I do not buy into that. Now, it might be there, but I don't. Do you buy into that?

No, I do. Well, it's much more nitrogen deprivation than it is a little pathy, in my opinion.

Exactly. The cereal rye is such a sequester of nutrients, it's taking away that those available nutrients for that young plant that it desperately needs. So if we understand that and we pull nitrogen forward into the program, we can overcome that. Okay, with that thought, now let's go to the weeds. What's happening to the weeds? We are starving the weeds. So now we have buckled them at their knee. And now the cereal rye is growing at such a rapid rate, not only have we taken the nutrient fuel away, we're now taking the valuable sunlight away. And we've buckled those weeds at the knees. That's why when you come to our farm, you will not see very many broadleaf weeds in these fields. But now here's what we're seeing, John, and this is where. This is where we have to be in touch with Mother Nature and listen to what she's telling us. Okay? So I do this testing on every Monday, and I do this all the way through until the rye is almost gone. So we're into like October now, because I want to see when did that nutrient load peak and then when did it fall off and when is it totally exhausted? Well, guess when the majority of the cereal rye releases its nutrients. About the middle of August, the first week to the middle of August. And what is coming on in that time frame?

When do we have the peak nutrient need for a grain fill?

Foxtail. Foxtail is coming. And foxtail is coming with a vengeance. So now we have to figure out how do we, and I like to call it, change the trigger. So how do we change the trigger of that foxtail having harmful effects on the outcome of our cash crop? So what we're starting to do now in the field locations that we're having these higher foxtail outbreaks in, and you might have a reason, you might have two or three reasons why we have foxtail. I am now shifting those to a cereal grain so that we can now get that cereal grain off in time and then come back with another cocktail that to smother out when that foxtail's wanting to get going. And so far it's been working. It's not exactly what I want, but we're gaining on this. But the point here is we've gotta understand what's going on and I think that's what's happening here. So tell me what you think about foxtail and why you think it's prevalent in some fields. In some fields it's not.

There is this common discussion that different weed species require a certain mineral profile that's accurate as far as it goes, but it's incomplete. It's not just the mineral profile, it's also the microbial profile that requires specific microbial profile. Yeah. And so with foxtail, we know that we have a certain soil physical structure. It's often very blocky. Not always, but it's often very blocking. It's often because the soil doesn't have enough available calcium and because boron moves out of that soil fairly quickly, all of that also contributes to the microbial profile as well. So you're changing the microbial profile with your cropping system, your cover cropping system. And there's no question that given enough time, the foxtail is going to disappear.

I agree.

And you can probably also facilitate that with some soluble calcium as well.

I don't know. I mean, we still do haney testing. Our calcium is good. I know everybody wants to say they don't have compaction. That's not possible. I mean, we're running around with big, heavy equipment. There's Always some compaction. We try to keep it to a minimum the best we can. It seems like the foxtail, it's all about biomass of the COVID crop. In my opinion, if you don't have £10,000 plus, you're not going to have a very successful weed suppression. I can't use the word control because you're never going to control it. You're trying to suppress those weeds. And what happens here is, and I'm not disputing that what you're saying, John, isn't true. I think you're right. I also think though that the free power of the sun that we don't, a lot of us don't seem to take advantage of, we're trying to do the most we can. I mean, it's free energy. We ought to tap into it. Once we get the microbial engine in overdrive, we cannot keep these, these, these packages around very long. So our ground cover disappears. So ground cover disappears. The sunlight's coming in and now you've got an explosion of weeds. Okay, so I've got a rule here, it's called the 70, 30 rule. 70% of the weed suppression comes from the COVID crop package and 30% comes from the cash crop canopy. So with that being said, we are on 20 inch row spacing corn and 20 inch row spacing soybeans. And I think if we can plant the beans at the right time, I think we can even go down to a drill because we did actually drill some beans this year and those were the cleanest fields we had.

That also gives you the opportunity to look at some of the different breeding work that was done with shorter stature beans that were particularly high yielding. Yeah, there's some interesting breeding work going on that has gone on historically that has largely been left by the wayside where beans were pushing 9,000 bushels an acre. With short stature beans.

When I was a kid we used to plant soybeans called dwarf beans. Very short and they would pound on the yield. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Very high yielding.

I want to go back to something else, John, if you don't mind. I've mentioned that I think we're going to be co mingling cash crops. We're already doing it now. You already know of a lot of people doing it. I think that's going to just pick up momentum and keep going forward. The other thing that I think is happening, is going to happen here is a farmer is going to be able to sit down with a gentleman like you and you're going to answer five questions, okay? What weeds are we trying to go after? What's your three top weeds? What's the cash crop you came out of? What rotations have you been in? What's the cash crop you're going to go into? And you're going to build a cover crop cocktail that will turn on the correct microbes and make this synergy kick into high gear. And away we go. And that's coming.

We already have large parts of that.

Yeah, I mean, you know, Dr. Christine Jones has a tremendous four part series on green cover seed. You've got to go check those podcasts out.

Yeah, they're incredible.

They're incredible. And one of her podcasts is on a nitrogen and she is trying to tell us politely that if we would just incorporate species of the four categories of COVID crops properly, we will now wake up and turn on those microbes that will fix nitrogen naturally within the soil. Think about how huge that becomes now, because now you don't need to depend solely on that legume to do all the load for you here. And that's what's wrong. That's why again, I'm going to go back to tillage. Tillage is number one on my list. You have to stop tillage because all these microbial communities are building themselves and then you come through with tillage and wipe them out. They start their life to rebuild those communities again, just in time to be wiped out again. Those microbial communities are doing nothing toward building Soul Health. All they're doing is rebuilding their communities to keep getting destroyed.

They're barely surviving, not thriving.

That's right. And you've got to look for validations. You have to constantly be looking for validations. For example, we've not applied any ag lime on our farm for eight years and our soil pH is 6.8 and rising. That's a validation of what we're doing is correct. We're heading toward balance.

There's this little secret. I've spoken about it frequently in webinars, but few people get to actually observe it and experience it. That is biology determines chemistry, not the other way around.

That's right. And you know what, John? When I am so again, I am so blessed, I have people contact me that just make me so happy. We have the National FFA Convention is in Indianapolis. It's an hour and a half away from where I live. That week I had an ag teacher from Minnesota call me and say, hey, I'm bringing five students to the National FFA concert. Would you mind if we came and spent the afternoon with you? On one of those. Because we're going to be so close on one of those days. I said, sure, come on over. So five kids from high school FFA come with two AG teachers and we sit here in the office and talk for two and a half hours. And that is exactly what I want to do because that group of kids are going to be running the farm soon. And if we can get that message to them now, then that's going to resonate with them and it's going to stay with them. And I got text messages and emails from those students as they were driving back to Indianapolis. How wonderful of a day they had. They couldn't have been more pleased. And one of the things that I got asked was, what would you recommend to go to college and study? And I said, if I could do it all again, I'd be a biologist and an ecologist. So get those two degrees because that's exactly what we're doing out here. We're changing the biology. And John, I wish I knew more about biology because then I would maybe understand the cause and effect a little bit sooner than the testing. I do. Because in 2021, the year we're currently in, I had eight tests going on. Well, that's the only way that I know how I can find out what's going to work on this farm is I've got to do these tests. Some worked, some didn't. Rick, I'm going to.

I'm going to take the liberty to throw out a very different perspective here.

Yeah.

I've been told by several of my mentors that I could not possibly have learned what I now know in college. And we live in a world today where information is so readily accessible. If you are willing to do the work and apply yourself and go find it, talk to people, get their directions on where to go looking. We have people like Christine Jones and like Don Huber and like many of these scientists who are so readily, freely sharing their information, you can go digging them and there is. There is no peer reviewed, published paper that you can't find on the Internet somewhere.

Right.

The information is there, the knowledge is there. We just have to apply ourselves. And I would say that for people who maybe don't have the opportunity to attend the college or university, don't think for a moment that you're missing out.

Oh, no.

Because you may actually have an advantage.

That's right. You know, I was taught a lot of things. I was taught by my father, I was taught by university, and I'm not. Again, this goes back to the early parts of our conversation here today, John, where I'm not putting anybody down. That's not what I'm about. All I'm saying is I don't follow those practices anymore. I've turned this farm upside down, inside out, and we are doing nothing that at best, look anything like academia's view on farming. So I'm proud of that. I'm good with that. That's okay. I'm glad I got the education because, hey, there's way more to education than just books. It's the social part of it. It's learning how to get along with people, learning how to make up your mind, learning how to think for yourself. That's one of the things I often talk about. My dad taught me how to think. That's way different than teaching you how to farm. Now think about that, because, you know, we can go out. Okay, you're going to go out. You're going to plant your corn two inches deep. You're going to do this. You're going to. Okay, I get all that. But, dad, what do you do when something doesn't go the way you expected it to go?

You go to plan capital Z. Yeah, that's.

That's what's important here. You have to be quick, nimble, and ready to move at a moment's notice and realize that this is not going to work. We're going to head south on this one in a hurry and abandon it and move on.

Rick, one of the pieces that really stood out to me in the conversation a little bit ago was when you described how you were doing your weekly testing on your rye and on your rye residue. And, you know, this is something, to me that I am certain the information that you have learned about nutrient cycling in rye after doing that for a couple of years is invaluable. It gives you so much insight into nutrient availability and so forth. I've been a big advocate of the use of SAP analysis, but whatever the testing protocol is, whatever whether you're doing soil analysis, whatever the case might be, there is so much value in doing it consistently over time. Doing it every week or every two weeks throughout the growing season, you will learn orders of magnitude more than you will by taking a couple of spot samples through the season. In fact, after you do that, you start thinking that a couple of spot samples through the season are largely worthless, and you realize they pretty much are.

Yeah, I mean, you got to slow down. You've got to slow down, grab a chair and go out and sit in the middle of your Cow herd and pay attention to what they're telling you. You know, I've never had lambs before. My wife wanted to get in the sheep. And I'll tell you what, I love those things. I love them. Now go out there and pay attention to what they're doing. Do you know when they graze, they graze in the morning and the evening. Why is that? Because the sugar levels are at the highest at those points in time. Right. They're then relaxing and taking it easy in the middle of the afternoon when the heat's on. And so now you think about, you know, those thought processes now need to translate into when do you mow hay, when do you bale hay? And people are going to say, what are you talking about? But no, that's how this works. You've got to pay attention to what Mother Nature's telling you. And Mother Nature wants diversity and she wants rotation. And those are two key factors to this success here. Let's just talk about diversity again, John. I look at diversity in three ways. You have cash crop diversity, okay, so let's plant four species in this field, and. And over here we're going to plant 12, and then next year we're going to go to 16. That's diversity. That's number one. Number two, diversity is annuals and perennials. We do not think about this enough. If you look at the COVID crop packages, they're almost all annuals. Now, I have to be very careful now, though, John, because I'm organic, I use no tillage, and a perennial is almost suicide now on my farm. So I have to be very selective on what I do. But let's back up and let's don't go. Like I said, I'm this wacky guy from Indiana. Let's leave me over here for a moment. Let's come halfway back on this curve. And you're still using some chemistry as your help to get through this process. By all means, throw the kitchen sink at this. Annuals versus perennials. So that's my number two way to look at diversity. Number three is, and we've already touched on this, is not only to look at diversity in your cover crop package, but look at diversity in your cash crop package. We've got to start commingling these cash crops together. And to me, that's three ways to look at diversity.

Thanks, Rick. I want to challenge you a little bit. What if perennials don't compete with annuals, but instead they collaborate? What might those plants be? And there's actually, I've Shared a story a couple of times about. There actually were a couple of farms that we observed in the 2012 drought where corn was planted into stunted alfalfa. On two of the farms, the alfalfa was stunted with a light dose of herbicide application. And one of them, it was a light tillage pass. In the 2012 drought, those fields produced higher than average yields for the region. In a good year, when many farmers, some of these fields were pushing 190, 200 bushel per acre, when the regional average was 150, 160, and that year it was 50 to 60. So what I learned from that particular incidents was that alfalfa and corn actually have a powerful synergistic relationship in the way that they manage moisture. For a corn plant, a corn plant can actually harvest humidity out of the air and use it as a water source all the way down to 15% humidity. And an alfalfa plant is the opposite. It releases humidity into the atmosphere up until the atmosphere reaches 85% humidity. So now you have this crossover between 15% and 85% where the alfalfa plant is picking up moisture from way down deep, bringing it up, releasing it into the air. The corn plant is getting moisture from the air. So I would ask you this question. In a no till environment, what about plants like chicory and plantain that are very low growing forbs that may not compete anyway? It's just an idea.

Yeah, let me expand on that. We have just come out of our fourth year of no tilling corn into alfalfa, and this can work. It can also be a disaster because we're asking a warm season grass corn to be planted into an established perennial alfalfa. Okay, so let me walk you through our process of what we do on this. We will come in and I will not take off that first cutting. About everybody says, Rick, why don't you take that first cutting off and get that big, the big massive load out of your way? Well, there's a lot of nutrients leaving the field on that first load, so I don't want to lose that. So what we do is we go in when the, when the alfalfa is about 27 or 8 inches tall, we no till plant corn into that. I come back at V1 or V2. So, you know, the corn's about this tall. We'll roll, crimp that alfalfa flat with the crimper. It will not hurt the corn. We know that's not going to terminate the alfalfa. We know that. But what we're trying to do is knock that alfalfa down, give the corn a fighting equal chance to now come up, rise through that, see the sun and take off. Start reaching for the sky. Now, three out of the four years we've done this. I know this is going to be hard to believe, but three out of the four years we've done this, the alfalfa is terminated. Let's go back to my 70, 30 rule. I talked about earlier. 70% of weed suppression with the COVID crop, in this case alfalfa. I mean, there's no. There's nothing out there. There's nothing growing but alfalfa. So you're starting off with a clean. A clean field. Now, the corn, we're on 20 inch row, spacing. The corn comes up canopies. And now it absolutely starves that alfalfa of the sunlight that it desperately needs. It starts to fold and buckle. And if you were to walk out there in August, John, it would look like the alfalfa was attacked by weevils. You know, it gets that yellow look, leaves are falling off. And you, you're saying, wow, this is crazy. And now those nutrients are starting to really be available for that plant right.

When it needs it the most.

Those annuals. Yes, I'm with you on that one. Let's talk about the other two you mentioned, chicory and plantain. Wow. I'm telling you, I made a big mistake three years ago. And when we were in transition to organic, I planted some chicory. I can't stop it now, John. I cannot stop it. I must be doing something wrong. I need you to think about this. But when I plant corn into that crop or that volunteer species of chicory, it just suffocates it, it just simply smothers it, and the corn will absolutely fail.

Have you tried turning your sheep on it? Because sheep love chicory.

I've not done that yet. I will. And I was also told to gather some chicory and put it in a. In a barrel and let it decay and ferment over time. And then to come out with that liquid that is produced by that and spray that back over the chicory, and that will kill the chicory. Have you heard of such a thing?

I have. It's very effective some of the time, but not always.

Not always. Okay. See, these are the types of things, John, that intrigued me, because now we are figuring out how to use mother nature to our advantage and let her do all the work here. I've been attacking this chicory thing. Wrong. All wrong.

You Talked about progression and succession in plants, ecological development, ecosystems. In the process of developing a tea or a brew from a specific plant, we should think about these plants, microbial inoculants, essentially, because they have all these symbionts that live on the leaf surface and inside the plant as well as in the root system. And what you're doing in that process, you're essentially creating a microbial inoculant that has a extraordinarily high abundance of the biology that that specific plant contains. You spray that onto the soil and the soil gets the message that, oh, that biological succession sequence has been filled. It's time to move on to the next step.

Now, let's use that same thought, John, on alfalfa, do you think we could do the same thing? You think we put alfalfa in a barrel and I'm just, I'm just spitballing here, and we let it decay and ferment down and pull this tea off, as you call it, and go back out and spray that tea back onto that established alfalfa field. Do you think we might help the. The process of terminating that alfalfa?

Yes. Yeah.

Look, there's a lot more to the.

Science than just this very crude outline, but I'm guessing just doing something very simple would be effective a great deal of the time. And being a bit more nuanced, sophisticated about it, we could probably get to almost complete success rate.

Yeah, and see, I think that's what excites me. So that's what I'm going to start doing next. I'm going to start getting, for lack of a better term, start building these bioreactors. And corn is such a finicky crop. I mean, it does not like competition around it other than its own plants. And I know that seems weird, but it's what I've witnessed out here. And especially if I think back to the days when we used chemistry, we were putting out there these massive cocktails. We were. We'd plant five, six pounds of hairy vetch, five, six pounds of fixation clover, into six or seven other species. And most of those winterkill and the clover and the vetch would survive the winter. We come out next spring and we're planting corn into vets that you cannot walk across the field, John, because it's so. It'll trip you up. You got a high step to get across the field, it's that thick. And when we would come in with a small amount of chemistry and burn that down brown quick, the corn would come up and see that brown and just explode. Because those nutrients are more readily available than when I'm trying to mechanically terminate them. So there's so many different ways. You've got to look at everything that we're doing out here because the people who are still using the chemistry are going to have huge success in the program I just described. The folks who are trying to mechanically terminate are going to say, what in the world is taking so long? Why is this corn stalled out? Why won't it grow? We've changed the physiological structure of this plant. All of these things are happening. You see it all the time. So a, I'm not smart enough yet to figure out how to combat those problems. Now. I think we're getting better. I've gone out and I'm going to pose another question to you now. We went out this spring into a legume biomass of £13,000. It was massive. I didn't think we would have any success. No tilling into that and then roll crimping after the fact. So we came in and flail chopped first. Now here's my question to you. How much nitrogen did we lose through the atmosphere?

I don't know that definitively, but it's a lot.

You think we lost a lot?

Yes, I would guess so, yeah.

So that's probably not a very good practice to continue to do then.

Not if you can avoid it. Not only are you losing nitrogen, but perhaps even more importantly, you're losing lots of carbon dioxide.

Yes. So that's not good. So we cannot count on that system to be the one that we're going to continue to use going forward. Yeah. So, you know, with all these things being said, we just have to keep going down this road. And timing is a big thing here. When are you going to plant your corn crop into that legume package? When are you going to come in and roll crimp? I mean, all of these things make a big difference on the final outcome of your cash crop that you're planting.

When I think about the, as you're describing all of the different moving pieces and parts, I want to go back to the early part of the conversation. We talked about shifting systems, changing from one system to a different system. And you made a comment that I don't recall ever hearing before, which is that the management is actually easier. If I understood you correctly, and it seems to me that easiness or maybe laziness or ease of use is one of the motivators for the continued use of triple stack hybrids and Roundup, etc. You can plant a Seed in the ground and spray it a couple of times and take a vacation for a few months if you like. That's right. I'd love to hear your elaborate on that a little bit further. How is management easier from the mainstream system?

Here's what I mean by that. The system is constantly evolving and changing, okay? With cocktail packages, these species, not these species, and so on and so on. That's complex because your brain is always working and trying to think about how are the synergies related and all this. More of what I meant by that statement was though, the generalities of the system. We know we've got to get cover crops planted in timely fashion. We know we have to stick with these core species here and we're going to augment them with other species if time is permitted to allow that. We have half the machinery we used to have. We don't have near as many people on the farm working these many acres. So the logistics is way different. We're not pulling out 300 bushel corn. We're pulling out 130 bushel corn. That's a big deal. That's a big difference between wearing yourself out or not wearing yourself out. We know that we're going to go in and I'm trying to do this on a three pass system. The first pass is the COVID crop pass in the fall. The second pass is the no till planting pass of the cash crop. And the third pass is the mechanical termination. Now, I don't mention the combine because everybody has to combine. I'm just referring to the passes that to get to that point. So that's what I meant by actually easier to manage because I'm no longer worrying about I gotta have 12 guys hired because we gotta have five semis at the end of the field. We gotta have two auger wagons, we gotta have five rippers running. You know, we gotta call the fuel company every week and they gotta bring a transport of fuel. I mean, I'm done with all that stuff. And that's what really eases my mind. And now I can open my mind up and think about other things. I mean, John, we haven't talked much about economics here. Yeah. Right. Now I have just recently updated my information based on current pricing of inputs. And on a farm our size, we are saving almost $1.7 million a year in inputs. Now that's huge. I don't care who you are or what you're doing, that's a big deal. We go back to the comments we talked about in the beginning. Change is good. But change is hard and change is difficult. And once you start that change, you're going to say to yourself, why didn't I do this 10 years ago or 20 years ago? But when you start to do the things that we're doing, I've often said if it's not a wacky idea, it's probably not going to work, because that's just about where we are now. Just try anything that. And stick. Throw it to the wall and see if it sticks. That's. I mean, who would have thought that we're going to plant corn and soybeans together and harvest them at the same time with a bean table? Is it going to work? I don't know, but we got to try. It's constantly thinking about how can we do things differently than we've been taught to do them. And once you get over that hurdle, you can very quickly get overwhelmed. I mean, John, you go hear me speak somewhere, and that farmer decides in that next fall, you know what that guy, I heard that guy say he plants 130 pounds of steroid. That's what I'm going to do. And then next spring, Mother Nature decides to say, you know what? I'm going to humble everybody here, and we're going to rain for six weeks, and that rye is going to go from 12 inches tall to 6ft tall. Now what are you going to do? That's when it becomes, on the surface, overwhelming. But once you've got experience with this, it's not that big of a deal. So that's kind of what I meant by I have a lot less things to think about than I think the average farm. I mean, John, can you imagine right now sitting down and trying to make your plans for next year's cash crop when the retail plant tells you that I can't guarantee I can get you any of these synthetic inputs. What in the world are you going to do now? I can't imagine.

When you think about what you just said several times in this conversation, you don't have all those things to manage and to think about now, which gives you the freedom, the liberty, the opportunity to think about all of these other variables that you're brainstorming about.

Exactly right.

That's actually, I think a big point is that many growers make themselves so busy that they don't have the bandwidth to think right.

I can tell you for a fact that being mentally tired is more harmful to your body than physical tiredness. Because when you get to that point, you cannot think about anything that you need to do. And then that's when things just start escalating and the dominoes start falling and you just say to yourself, I can't do this anymore. That's where you have to get away from. So you're exactly right. Maybe I over emphasize that, but you're right. My brain is no longer thinking about ripper points because I, you know, hey, what are those? What do you have? You put those new ripper points. You know, I don't think about that stuff anymore. I think about what can I add to my 12 way cocktail to augment what I'm currently doing and turn more microbes on. Because see, I truly believe, John, that we are absolutely wearing the soil out. We're not. But the conventional tillage systems are wearing the soil out and they've absolutely turned off the majority of the microbes in the soil profile. They don't have a job. So you now come into the system that we're on and we're starting to wake more of those microbes up. They're getting back to work and they are now starting to work at peak performances. And you can see the changes happening on the farm. I've always said the only thing you need to have in the back of your pickup is a spade. You can determine soil health with a spade. You know that. You know, one of the things that I look at and I'm, I need to do more of your SAP testing. I've not done much of that, but one of the things that I've looked at is, is soil aggregate, the aggregate stability in the soil. Now again, you've got to start looking at why these things make sense. One of the things you always hear is you will not see changes occur in this farming system for three to five years.

That's hogwash.

That is hogwash. So let's go now with your spade. Let's go out to your field. You are mass destruction of soil with tillage. Is there any aggregate. Aggregate stability? No. But if you were to bring in no till and cover crop in that first year, you will start to see aggregate stability. Now what I've seen happen on our farm is this. When we had aggregate stability that was two to three inches deep from the surface down. Now, John, it's six inches deep. So see that is now moving down through. We've woken more microbes up. The system is running at peak performance. We're being good stewards to the land. We're not out there when we're supposed to be out there. That's another thing that I often read or hear about, hey, these systems are so resilient. You can get in these fields two days sooner than your neighbors. Who cares? Get in the field when the field is fit. I'm often two days after my neighbors because they all seem to think that iron fixes all the problems. So if they go out and cut ruts, they'll just rip their field and fix their problem. Well, I don't have that luxury because we sold all of our tillage equipment. If you want to abandon tillage, John, sell all your equipment. And you don't have that desire to. Or that. Well, you may have the desire, but you don't have the capability to go use that equipment. You've got to stop and slow down and listen to what mother Nature's telling you. She has guided me through this whole journey all the way, and she still is today.

Rick, this has been such a fascinating conversation. You mentioned that you enjoy going up to the 50,000 foot view and looking at things from a really big picture perspective. How do you imagine the future evolving in the agricultural landscape and on your farm?

Yeah, that's a great question. I truly believe that if. Now this is a big if. Remember, I've talked about success. The farmer has to have success at the first time they try this. If that is accomplished and the teachers are put in place to teach the students properly and we can start to get more and more cover crops on the acres that we need to get them on. And then I think that once that farmer sees the validity that these cover crops can bring to their bottom line, I think you're going to just naturally see a progression of more and more and more cover crops happen. So with that being said, I think in my lifetime we will probably see 10 to 15% of the farmland in the United States be under some kind of a cover crop, no till system. You know what, John, between you and I, we would love to see every acre covered. We know that's not possible. That's not, that's not realistic. So what is realistic? I think 20%, 25% is a realistic number. And if you do the math, that's a lot of acres.

Yeah, it is. And you know, I share your optimism. And if anything, perhaps because I'm more youthful, I'm even more optimistic. We don't know what the future holds. But if energy prices and nitrogen prices keep climbing, all of a sudden cover crops are going to be intensely economically competitive. And that could be one mechanism for producing radical change.

Yeah, you see, one of the things that I often talk about is I Like to talk to the audience as if they're still using chemistry, because I think a lot of folks are. So now let's go with the COVID crop legume package that I would plant. It's going to cost you $25 an acre. And I'm asking you to wait until at least after Mother's Day to plant your corn. First of all, those legumes aren't usually visible until around Mother's Day. I mean, you know, they, they hang out under the soil profile. They're waiting for the right conditions to trigger. And then here they come in a geometric fashion and they just explode. If you could wait until that legume has fixed, let's say 100 pounds of nitrogen. And now I know that all of that is not available. Now let's take half of that. So 50 pounds and nitrogen is almost a dollar a unit of in right now. So that's 50 bucks. It cost you 25 to plant the cocktail. I'm going to ask you to reduce your synthetic load by £50 and rely on that £50 that was fixed with that legume. And now you're going to save $25 an acre and you're going to start to see the benefits of that cover crop. That's what I mean by success. To me, I would think a farmer would view that as a success. Now there's way more going on here than just nitrogen being fixed. I mean, that legume is pulling in P205K2O, boron, sulfur, magnesium. All of these other elements we need are coming along and what's their value here? So once you start to get into that mindset that these cover crops are not your enemy, they're your friend, then we're really going to see huge change. And you know what, John, this may be exactly what our industry needs, is for these inputs to go sky high. I'm actually smiling. Yeah, yeah.

I think it can produce tremendous positive change if we channel it correctly.

That's right. That's exactly right. That is exactly correct.

So I want to go back to the question that I asked from a 50,000 foot view. How do you imagine the future evolving? What about your farm specifically? How do you imagine your farm evolving with all of the crazy ideas that you continue to try?

I just see it getting better and better all the time. Again, I can take you to huge successes on the farm and I can take you to those outcomes I didn't expect on the farm and I'll show it to anybody all day long. But I think what's going to happen here, John, is we're going to see more and more successes and less and less of the outcomes I did not expect. Remember, I've taken failure out of my vocabulary. When you can get to that prescription that I'm talking about. I mean, I truly believe this. When you sit down and say you've got giant ragweed with marestail and waterhemp, those are the three weeds I need to go after. Okay, you're going to plant these eight species right here. When we can fine tune and hone in on that more, it's going to make our system become even more successful. And that's where I see the changes occurring in our farm. We're going to have more, more success stories and less of those outcomes I did not expect.

Even though I've just gotten to know you, you strike me as someone that tends to be fairly an open book. And so what I want to ask you is what is a topic that you don't often speak about because you sense that people may not be ready to hear it yet?

Yeah, just the simple fact of too many opinions are based on perception. And here's what I mean by that. You drive by and you look at what we're doing and you're going to say that is an absolute train wreck. Why in the world would I want to do that? Would you please just stop your vehicle at the end of the field and climb in with me in the tractor and let's have an hour long conversation. I don't know if I'm really answering your question here, John, but I just get so that you got to have such thick skin here. I mean, there's people coming at you from all angles. It's negativity, it's positivity. You get blasted by everything. And you have to truly be careful what you say because people listen to what you say and it's hard to continually try to change people. So you have to now accept the fact that you're not going to change everybody. So now figure out who wants to be changed and help them change the maximum amount of way they possibly can. Now, I doubt if I answered your question, but I talk about everything, so there's really not. I mean, the health, my personal health has just recently come out, so that was probably a little staggering point for me right there. But if you're going to go down this road and if you are in a region where no one is doing this and you're going to be first, you better buckle in and hang on because you're going to get everything negative you possibly can.

And this is, I think, the important point if you're in that situation, if you're the first in a region, you need to find some peers. They don't have geographically close proximity, but you need to find other people who have similar interests, who can travel the road with you, that you can rely on, that can talk to and learn from and gain experiences from and have a support group building community.

That's exactly right. Yeah, exactly right. I'll tell you what I really like about this regenerative movement and then I'm going to tell you what I don't like about it. Okay? What I really like about this regenerative movement is it's being farmer led. This is critical. The farmer is leading this and the consumer is paying attention. And now the, the consumer is applying the pressure to the processor to get us that higher quality food that we so desire. So it's all working in what I would call reverse of typically the way things are done. And that's important. Now here's what I don't like about this. There is not a definition of regenerative farming that the whole industry agrees on. So how in the world can we be heading for a goal if none of us know what that goal is? And this is important here, John, because if this definition does not get created soon, we're going to start losing people on the way as we go because they're going to say, you know, Rick wants to stand up there and say that if you asked him what his definition of regenerative farming is, he's going to tell you you've got to take everything away. Well, that's very radical. So then you go over here to Bob over here on the left side and you say, Bob, what is your definition of regenerative ag? Well, you know, I'm currently applying synthetic fertilizers across all of my farm and chemistry. If I was just to reduce 10%, I'm going to go out there and publicly say that I'm being regenerative. Well, I have a problem with that. So we've got to get to this definition and it needs to happen soon. So here's what I think is going to happen. And we're seeing this now. You're going to get companies just making their own rules. So you've got company ABC out here. They're going to set up. This is our definition of regenerative farming. This is it. Consumer. Do you agree with us? Yes. Company abc. We agree that that is a good definition for regenerative Farming. So now company ABC goes to their farmer force and they say, we need you to implement these changes and we're going to be considered regenerative. That's what I think is going to happen. And then I also think that same thing is going to happen with the carbon markets. I think about companies, I'm not going to pick on any particular company, but I'm just going to go to an industry, let's go to a, the implement industry and let's say that they truly care about the size of their carbon footprint as a company for worldwide and they want to go to whatever the new thing is. We gotta be net zero by 2030 or whatever. Okay. What happens if that company were to implement a carbon program internally within their own company? Okay, so now you have a customer base that'd be really easy.

They just stop manufacturing tillage equipment.

Yeah, you could probably one way to do it. Yeah, exactly. But let's say you now want to feed into a carbon market and you want to feed into becoming neutral carbon by a certain date. So now you hire people like yourself or me to go teach and teach these farmers how to farm. This way you pay that farmer for, for that carbon credit and instead of giving him cash, you give him rebates back at the store. And now when he comes in to purchase a new piece of equipment, he uses those carbon offsets to decrease the value of that purchase. The mother company has taken that carbon credit and shrunk their carbon footprint of their worldwide space. What's wrong with all that? I think that's a beautiful thing. Now you hire in a third party that has no effect or control about anything. They make sure the systems are in place and being done correctly. And then when that company reaches neutrality, they can now sell any excess carbon credits that they may have accumulated. So now you have that customer base who feels good about things. They're building carbon, they're being taught how to do this properly. The mother company is getting those credits and offsetting. And now the whole thing just goes from this out to this. And that's where I see some of these things heading. Yeah.

I will say that I have, I have mixed perceptions about the carbon marketplace and carbon credits as it's, it's kind of currently in its wild west cowboy days. We'll see how things evolve. I do believe that we need to sequester carbon, not just to sequester carbon, but to restore hydrological cycles, et cetera. So it's, I'm in agreement that this is something that needs to happen. And if we can incentivize that and motivate that with economic payouts, then I think that's a valuable and useful tool. I'm not persuaded that that is enough to produce the change that we want to see in the world by itself. We also have to stop using some of our energy inputs quite as freely and radically as we are. I agree.

It's like everything else is moderation, you know, got to get to moderation. You know, back to my diet. Have I totally eliminated carbs? No, I'm now taking carbs within moderation, and I'm now in balance with my fats and my proteins and the carbs and sugars. They're all in balance now. I feel great. And I am a firm true believer that you cannot have human health until you get soil health.

Yeah, I agree.

And those two go hand in hand. It's absolutely amazing. If you start to look at the parallels of the human body and that field out back here, okay, if I'm sick, I don't feel good. My performance is down. If my field is sick, it doesn't feel good. Guess what? The performance is down. Now you have to figure out, how do we bring the Mother Nature aspect in and build that health back into that system? And it's not going to be done with synthetic fertilizers and synthetic chemistry. It's not.

Rick, this has been a wonderful conversation. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for being here and for sharing your experiences and your wisdom. And I look forward to having more conversations with you in the future.

This will be great, John. Thank you. It's been an honor to be one of your guests today. Thank you so much.

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. 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. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.