Latest / The Source – The Jorgensen Land & Cattle Podcast / The Source — Field Notes: Defining Soil Health
Transcript
- speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: Over a hundred years of experience lie in Ideal South Dakota. The team at Jorgensen Landing Cattle is going to take the time to offer insight into that experience along with many other industry experts. If you're ready to learn and grow, this is the Source. Welcome to the Source Field Notes edition. ⁓ fun topics we're going talk about over the next several series that come out with ⁓ my favorite farming feed growing expert Brian Jorgensen. Thanks for joining us, Brian. speaker-0: Thanks for having me. speaker-1: ⁓ the first part of this this series, ⁓ Brian embarking on a a new old venture is how I would probably term it. ⁓ I love the name, ideal soil solutions. ⁓ go ahead and give me some background as to why this is becoming a a full segment of the Jordan Solana cattle business and and what it what it does. speaker-0: Yeah. So Ideal Soil Solutions is a newly named subsidiary of Jorgensen Land and Cattle. ⁓ At this point in time, it'll be under that umbrella. At some point in time in the future, it may run off on its own entity. But what it really is is a rename of basically a distributorship that I owned for about 25 years ⁓ with Summit Gold, who is A manufacturer in Illinois that produces soil amendment products, foliar products, microbial products, of which we've been using on our operations since the early 2000s. And so ⁓ I've been in that sales business for many, many years. And in 2023, we decided to sell that business, the distributorship of Summit Gold to Jorgensen Landon Cattle. And so it's been running under that umbrella ever since that. point in time. We've decided to grow that business. ⁓ We see a lot of opportunity in terms of if you look at the scale of where we market bulls today across 38 plus states, that gives us an opportunity to find some of those, perhaps some of those clients that may have some interest in soil amendment products, whether it's for rangeland, hay land, or crop ground, we think we have some solutions for that. speaker-1: Sure. speaker-0: And aside from that, ⁓ going out and garnering new business as well. So we're we're hiring people as we speak. We've hired an agronomist, a sales manager. ⁓ we've written written ⁓ the vision and miss mission statement. ⁓ and so we're well on our way. We're going to officially launch ideal soil solutions in June of twenty twenty-six. ⁓ and so until that time, we're kind of through almost through halfway anyway, the twenty twenty-six sales season. So we decided to wait until towards the end of that sales season to launch it. So I'm excited about it. ⁓ what we're gonna offer in terms of what bring what it brings to the table, not just summit gold products. It's really a philosophy. So the first thing that we want to to try and get to our customers is the philosophy of soil health. Okay, and it doesn't matter if they're growing corn, wheat, soybeans, orchards, vineyards. turfs, golf courses, rangeland, hayland, anything soil related that has a plant and a root, the definition of those soil pr health principles is the same. And so once we understand that, the tools that we have are the knowledge base that we've had, the experience levels that we've ⁓ acquired over the last 20-some years of using products and technologies. We have all of those at our disposal, and I look at those tools like tools in a toolbox. But the philosophies of soil health are what really define ideal soil solutions from everybody else. speaker-1: And and so what what I'm getting from you on this project, Brian, is that this is a consultative business. And when I was in the in the feed sales business, the company that I worked for, that was what drew me to them. I didn't have a product line that I had to sell. Basically everything we did was custom and we were gonna fit your needs with the products that as you're talking about we have in the toolbox to get there. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I think consultation will be as much a as much a part of your business as anything moving forward. speaker-0: That's that's very much true. Obviously we do have a lot of technologies at our disposal in in terms of products ⁓ and soil testing technologies, all kinds of different things that we can use to help each individual customer to tailor the needs that they have to fit the needs of the soil system. Absolutely. speaker-1: So I think what what we've gathered out of this guys is that when we talk about ideal soil solutions, we're not just talking about trying to sell you something. ⁓ Brian and his team, they want to be intimate with your operation. They want to know what you're doing, and they want to be able to help you put the right pieces in the right places to achieve the desired outcome. speaker-0: Exactly right. speaker-1: With that, we're gonna sum up this part of this series of field notes, and we will be back with another segment. Thanks, guys. Welcome back to Field Notes. Again, joined by my esteemed co-host for these next several segments, Mr. Brian Jorgensen. And the focus of the next outcoming ⁓ Field Notes episodes is gonna be soil health and the principles behind it. Brian, tell me what soil health means to you. speaker-0: Well, it's it's hard. So how do you define a beautiful woman? Right? It's depends on who's looking. It's right. It's kind of in the eyes of the beholder. But in my mind, if you were to define soil health, okay, it's the continued capacity for that soil to sustain and progress biological life, plant life, animal life, and ultimately human life. And do it in a sustainable and progressive manner. So that's really hard to achieve. It doesn't happen overnight because what we've done in our culture of agriculture has has done nothing but diminish the capacity of that soil to become efficient and sustain biological and sustain animal and plant life. We've had to add a lot of things to it to get that to do it. And what it has done, it has caused a degrading of that system in organic matter, in all of the different things that cause soil balance. Once we get out the soils out of balance, they become less efficient, they become less able to sustain all of those different life forms that we talked about. And so if we look at the principles of soil health, which we're going to go through in detail as we go ahead from here, each one of those things to me is paramount in getting that soil back to that balanced native state that we would consider. Continued support for biological, plant, animal, and human life. speaker-1: And when we talk about this, there there's a balance of of production, input costs, all the different things that that tie into going back to the baseline that is soil health. speaker-0: That's right. It takes a systems approach. It's not any one thing that is going to get you back in balance. It's a systems approach in the chemical, the physical, and the biological side of that soil. And within that, it's going to take management. It's going to take all kinds of things. It's not going to be an easy feat. But in my mind, if we truly want to get those soils back and stay that way for future generations, we have to do it this way. speaker-1: And it ⁓ I think we'll go through it in some of these principles. It's understanding where the governors are too. From a from a ruminant side, you know, everybody watching that's on the cattle feeding side, anything along those lines, we all understand that there's governors within that system. Right. And when we're running on the red line, w we cause issues. speaker-0: That's exactly right. For so many generations though, I have to tell you that we've really treated our soil as if it's just a place to grow plants and grow feed and grow seed and grow grain without really thinking about that it's a truly living biological system. And that and that because of that, we've we've really caused some detrimental effects to to it. So I think it if you if you understand and and and get a feel for these core principles, I think things can start healing itself. speaker-1: Yep. We're gonna talk about five main principles. ⁓ this episode we're gonna talk about ⁓ what Brian believes is probably the number one principle in soil health. Keeping the dirt covered. Brian, ⁓ lead lead us into this. speaker-0: I'm gonna correct you, it's not dirt. Soil. If it's dirt, then it's become a desert. But yes, number one, it would be soil armor. And that's really all about protecting the surface of that soil. It's just like our skin on our bodies. The skin on our bodies protects the substructures, the muscles, the bones, the capillaries, the arteries, the nerve cells, all of that stuff is protected by that layer of skin and any animal out there. speaker-1: Soil soil. It is soil. Absolutely. speaker-0: Is the same way. The skin on the surface of the soil is very much vulnerable to environmental instances. Rain, wind, sun, cold, heat, all of those things are gonna be detrimental to that surface of that soil. If if you think about the native prairie system, it has a constant armor on it all the time. It has all of that fodder from the generations of different grasses that have come on that have grown and the different legumes, the different forbs, all of that stuff deteriorates down and and creates a nice quilt, if you will, that when it's not disturbed will keep that soil temperature at less of a less of a peak and valley. It'll moderate the temperatures. It'll protect it from the heavy rains, any rains, it'll protect it from the wind, it'll protect it from the sun. And all of those things are to protect the biology underneath that soil system. Just creates a much better opportunity for the biological ⁓ activity. speaker-1: If if you were to to paint a picture of soil armor Should we all just think about that native rangeland that hasn't been overgrazed that that looks that way? Is that the picture we should be thinking of, Brian? speaker-0: That would be the ultimate ⁓ example of what soil armor really is. And obviously there's a big difference between ⁓ growing a corn or a wheat or a soybean crop and what you're gonna end up with at the end of the season. But if you th if you look at how that soil armor is developed in a say in a native prairie system, that's taken lots and lots of time to do that. Many, many decades of of that cycling of growing and dying and growing and dying. And of course that whole time we've got cattle that are grazing or deer or antelope or sheep or goats, whatever. We've got all of those consuming some of that organic material, but it's cycling it back out. But what's left is that quilt. And that is a perfect example of the kind of armor that I'm talking. speaker-1: So When we talk about a a farming system, Brian, why don't you give me a little bit more of the the why we we've done a little bit of the why the soil armor is so important. What's the impact that we have when we're not properly coating that soil? speaker-0: So, and we'll get into it in the next principle, but it's really about no till and disturbance. So not disturbing that soil is really important. But when we do, when we do tillage or when we do an overgrazing situation, what happens in a pasture when it's overgrazed? You're left with very little armor left, right? And we see all kinds of unwanted species coming into that into that system, whether it's unwanted grasses, unwanted broadleaf weeds, whatever. But it's a mismanagement practice that causes the system to break down. And so in a cropland situation, if we if we don't have low disturbance, if we don't have a diverse cropping system, and we take all the fodder off when we harvest and we don't replace it, we lower our organic matter levels, all of those things are going to cause a detrimental situation to that soil. And it becomes much more vulnerable to wind and water erosion. And all of the other things that we talked about. speaker-1: So we've we've covered, you know, some of these core things of of why why we want good soil armor. Go ahead and lead me lead me next into what some of your tactics are gonna be to keep soil armor in place. Sure. And follow that up with you know, when you talk about a tactic, what you're impacting with that tactic. Does that make sense? Okay. speaker-0: Yeah. So again, we'll probably we'll kind of branch into some of the other principles here, but the ⁓ the idea is if we're gonna stay on the premise of soil cover and soil armor, the management practices that we employ hit all of those boundaries. Right? Hit all those other principles. But it's really important to note that we have developed cropping rotations and different things and management schemes. to protect the soil armor, to build organic matter. Okay. So for example, when we harvest our winter wheat, if we just look at winter wheat as our year one crop, which is a it it you can look at it that way because we grow winter wheat ⁓ not just to grow winter wheat, but we grow winter wheat to keep the residue and hold moisture for the next crop which is going to most likely be corn. ⁓ And so between that time that we grow winter wheat and we grow corn, we're gonna put a cover crop in there. And it does it's gonna serve a multiple level of functions, but primarily it's to keep a living root, which is another principle, but it's also gonna create a grazing source for our animals, right? And so by doing that, we'll do yet another principle. ⁓ that's number five, and that's integration of livestock. But The whole idea, Jamie, is to to keep that system biologically active as long as we possibly can and keep as much residue and fodder on that surface as we can. Now, obviously in our system, we have to remove a lot of carbon for feed, whether it's corn silage, ⁓ we we remove straw for for for straw bales, we remove alfalfa for hay, grass for hay. All of those things are a net removal of carbon. And so it gets harder and harder to maintain soil armor when you take all the carbon off. And so wherever we can, in those scenarios where we're ⁓ where we are physically removing that crop, we're going to try and get another crop planted back in there, a cover crop of some sort, so that we can maintain the living root, the soil cover, an opportunity for livestock, and those things, all of those things are a systems approach. speaker-1: ⁓ Talk a little bit about ⁓ soil armor in terms of water. And we know in Trip County, ⁓ especially northern Trip County, ⁓ water ⁓ you you don't get to go turn a turn a spigot on and put water on it. speaker-0: I wish we had any I wish we had that ability, but no, we don't. So if you go back in time in the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties, when we started no-tilling, we did it for the primary reason of moisture conservation. And so when you talk about the importance of soil armor in terms of retaining moisture in the soil, it's huge. Because you've taken the sunlight directly off that water, off that soil surface. That's the first thing. The second thing is you've created a system where the raindrops no longer explode that soil surface and disperse the clays. It it soaks through the residues and then slowly percolates its way down into the soil profile. So we're we're allowing that soil to take that water and oxygen in at the same time, deep into the profile. And not just running off and getting wasted. And then that armor stays there to kind of insulate that, to keep the sunlight off of it. So it slows the evapotranspiration of the water, and it slows the temperature rises and the temperature decreases. And it gives the biological portion of the soil a stable environment in which to flourish. They have moisture, they have oxygen, and they have limited temperature fluctuations. speaker-1: So let's go back and and recap for for just a minute here. ⁓ we've answered the question of of what soil armor means to you. And it's just ensuring that we have a layer of cover across the soil. Yep. And then we've talked about how much of the year we want it to be protected. We've talked a little bit about what happens when we've left it bare. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about ⁓ temperature compared to to soil cover. And then we've added in ⁓ what cover crops are doing, any other living root that we're putting on that soil during those times where it's not actively growing at cash cropper feed. Right. ⁓ we've touched a little bit on water infiltration and We've talked a lot about protecting the surface. Is there anything there that that we need to go back to, Brian, and and touch on again to make sure that we get the the right point across? speaker-0: Right. Well let's talk a little bit about the management aspects of what are the things that our that our operation currently are doing that concern me, and those things that I'm comfortable with. Obviously, those things that I'm concerned with are the removal of the carbon, right? ⁓ in a perfect system, Jamie, in a pasture situation, for example, we're not physically removing that carbon. We're letting the we're letting the rumen do it, right? speaker-1: Okay. Absolutely. speaker-0: That's the most efficient way to cycle carbon. We all know that. So wherever we harvest off that carbon, whether it's corn silage again or even the grains, we've got to try and replace that, either replace that residue or get something growing as quickly as we can to replace that carbon. Manure is a good way to do that, except it's just not sometimes ⁓ an economical solution. And it's not going to replace what we've lost in terms of the residues. It's going to replace some of the nutrients, some of the organic matter, and certainly some of the biology, but it's not the perfect answer. So when you're in a system like we're in, you have to be constantly aware of your organic matter levels in your soil, which we monitor very, very closely every year. On a dry year, we're obviously going to lose some organic matter. And on good year, we're probably gonna gain some. ⁓ so it's a matter of just monitoring that and monitoring your rotation so that you don't find yourself removing continually, year after year after year, that heavy levels of carbon from your soil. So that's discipline in the in the crop rotation. It's discipline in not removing straws only when you need to. It's it's discipline and making sure there's a living root for as long as we can and it's discipline and how you manage the the ⁓ the grazing activities. All of those things. It's a systems approach. So if you're just a straight grain farmer, it might be easier, except for it's a little bit less economical. It's hard to make some of those practices ⁓ affordable without having livestock to cycle some of that, the cover crops, for example. But if you're in a really wet environment like we aren't, you're gonna find that you're gonna wanna use that excess water somehow. Otherwise that excess water becomes a detriment to you. So all of that soil armor is great, but if it's if you're keeping too much water, you've got to be able to manage that as well. speaker-1: Yeah, and I I think what you touched on there with maybe a a grain farmer that i isn't running any livestock themselves, and and we're gonna touch on economics, you know, here in a little bit, but that's that's also another economic opportunity for them if they're willing to outreach to some Kyokief guys or some yearling guys that graze that cover crop. Exactly. And there's all kinds of ⁓ Cattle operators looking for that kind of grazing throughout the year. ⁓ precisely. And so so opportunity there definitely available. speaker-0: I've told producers that if they don't have cattle, that's fine. I understand that. But there's definitely people in the area that do work a deal with them. In some cases, just let ⁓ have access to that crop ground, let them do the fencing, let them figure the water out. It would pay you dividends to not take a s a single penny from them. Right. It'll pay you dividends. But most guys are gonna be willing to pay you to let those cows or those sheep or those goats run on those acres and and feed ⁓ 'cause it's cheaper than doing it at the bunk line. speaker-1: Absolutely. ⁓ that covered a lot of how we're increasing soil cover. What are some things that as producers we're doing that we don't even think of that's unintentionally removing some of that cover? speaker-0: ⁓ well, I think the first thing I think of is ⁓ the grain farmers in this area anyway, especially when prices of the commodities get low, they have a tendency to just say, ⁓ I'm gonna remove the straw too, because that's an extra thirty or forty or fifty dollars an acre for me. But what they don't understand is from a long term perspective, they're just lowering their ability of their soil to function because they're taking that carbon away. And they're not thinking about that soil. They're not thinking about The balance. They're not thinking about the biology. They're not thinking about the soil armor. They're thinking about their pocketbook. And in today's ag economy, I I understand that, but you're only robbing from Peter to PayPal. And we look in terms of future generations and we've got to keep this soil built and maintained. And that's why we do the things that we do. That's one example, James. speaker-1: Right. And so so how do you balance, Brian? ⁓ for our team here at Jorgens Atlanta cattle, straw and corn stocks are two things that are important to the cattle op side of this team with betting for for bulls in the feed yard, betting for cows during Kevin time. ⁓ talk to me a little bit about how you go about the balance there because I think that's gonna be as important. The folks as as anything. speaker-0: So I look at the rotation again. And so if you look at where our wheat gets planted in the fall, our winter wheat gets planted mainly on spring wheat and oats ground, primarily. I don't re I don't really mind taking straw off of the oats or the spring wheat because I know that I'm going to plant a winter wheat crop on that. It's a high c all of those crops are high carbon crops. Okay. And so if we remove the straw from those, spring wheat and or the oats, I don't see an organic matter level drop when I go back to winter wheat because we're we're still dealing with a high carbon crop. Now, corn stocks might be a different situation unless I'm going to let's just say I'm second year into my ⁓ second year corn, ⁓ and I know I'm gonna go to an oats or a spring wheat or something of that nature. I won't have a huge issue. With removing those stalks, as long as I don't take all of that armor off the soil. We have to be careful there because your your corn's gonna be in a 30 inch row, depending on the rotation prior to that. It might be really easy to remove too much carbon. So the the corn stubble one is a little bit trickier than the wheat stubble one is. The spring wheat and the yat stubble. speaker-1: Okay. So those are just a quick example of something to keep in mind for everybody. You know, I think it tie it ties nicely back into what we've talked about with discipline and your rotations, discipline in your structures, knowing how you're gonna plan to take care of both sides of your yeah, your operation. When it comes to the soil armor conversation, there's gonna be people asking the questions about economics. ⁓ Where do you see the cost benefit analysis and and how do you determine some of those things, Brian? And maybe I'm phrasing this wrong. If you want to rephrase the question, please do so. speaker-0: Well, it's it's hard to it's hard to give you a number that says armor's going to give you this kind of return on investment. Right. That's that's really hard to define. Too many variables. But what it will do consistently over time is give your soil more resilience. When times do get tough, when the rain doesn't fall, the wind blows, that soil's gonna have a better chance of recovering when it does start to rain again in a way. speaker-1: Yep, absolutely. speaker-0: Does quit blowing. Those things I know in my heart. How do you put an economic value on that? I guess by the way, how well your crop does when it does get the moisture in the in in the in the good conditions to grow in. That's when I know that the soil armor is one of those things, one of the components of that healthy system. speaker-1: So are you are you looking at this with a reduction in any inputs on the front end with with using soil armor? speaker-0: Yes, give you a good example. So weed seeds, for example, ⁓ if they sit on the surface in a well-managed system that you have soil armor, you're gonna have biological activity. You're gonna have microbes that feed on seeds, on residue, and that that feeding Creates the cycle of nutrients that are tied up in the seeds and the residue. And so there's nutrient release microbes that work at the soil surface level that are gonna start eating all that stuff away. So we see less weed pressure where we have good biological activity in that soil armor. Because they eat the seeds. They basically break them down. speaker-1: And inputs are less. ⁓ trips across the field are going to be less with with this. And that goes to another principle we're going to talk about in a little bit, but I think pertinent to touch on here. every time you turn that diesel engine over, that's a it's a pretty good cost these days. ⁓ the other thing there ⁓ I think to touch on would probably be that that hidden cost. And we've talked about all the positives. If you're not doing it, you're gonna see the negative of erosion, nutrient loss, and then we have to go replace re replace it, correct? That's ⁓ you wanna ⁓ maybe expand on that just a little bit there, Brian. speaker-0: Correct. Yes. Real world example again is our operation. You know, we're we're long-term no-till ⁓ probably thirty-five plus years now. So what we've seen through these principles, and especially the soil armor and the diversity and and the disturbance one is we don't apply nearly as much fertility as we used to. And I define that by I I don't go by a university recommendation anymore. Any university recommendation on a soil test to me now is going to be double or in some cases triple what I would normally consider to be a normal application. We also see reduction in our use of herbicides. We're still using them, don't get me wrong. But we're not relying on herbicides 100% to keep our system clean. The systems approach that the principles give you the ability to use smaller amounts of those chemistries and to do the same thing because you're not giving the weeds an opportunity to take hold. So when you when you couple moisture savings, time savings from not tilling and going over the fields, money savings in the amount of inputs that you're applying, and then the improved Soil structure and the improved plant health, all of those things, if you you start to see that system coming together. And that's where the value comes from. speaker-1: Right. And and we're we're not talking about giving you extreme productivity changes. We're we're talking about making a system to where there's less inputs that have to go into it for it to produce the way it should. speaker-0: One of the first things that we talk about when we sit down with customers is to stop thinking about yield and start thinking about return on investment. Because you can drive yourself silly chasing yield. You can chase yield all day long. You can follow the national corn growers or the national soybean yield contest winners. It's one of the reasons our land is so out of reach is because we've chased yield. ⁓ As our driving economic factor. And so if you stop thinking about it in those terms and start thinking about it in terms of I want a good return on my investment, therefore, if your investments are lower, your chances of return on your investment increase. It's pretty simple economics. And so that's that's the principle that we run. speaker-1: And eff and efficiencies again. I I think you'll hear a theme as we go through these recordings that so much of this ties back to efficiencies with these soil health principles and and that's efficiencies for us, efficiencies for the soils, efficiencies for the crops. ⁓ the world revolves on efficiencies. speaker-0: Does absolutely. Absolutely. speaker-1: So if I was to be a grain farmer and I am a terrible person to be putting myself in those shoes because I'm not one, and I took the conversations that we're having now and I'm gonna start taking this really seriously. in the first couple of years, what changes should I see that are gonna start telling me that I'm doing the right things? speaker-0: What changes in the soil? speaker-1: Changes in the soil in Let let's do this two ways if we can, Brian. What are some things I should see visually that that are gonna start helping me know that that I'm doing the right things and then what what changes chemically and physiologically I'm gonna see in in maybe a soil test, something along those lines. That's gonna that's gonna guide me that hey, I'm making the yeah, making the right steps. speaker-0: Well, the first thing and I'm gonna kinda walk you through how I deal with some of our clients that we currently have, most of which, by the way, don't have livestock. ⁓ but I will say most of them are are no till or low low tillage. So the first thing I would tell them is, you know, let's look at your soil test and let's let's evaluate where we are today from a chemical and a physical standpoint. And let's just see if how many imbalances we're dealing with, because if In many cases, it's culturally been taken to a point where things are out of whack chemically. Our saturate our base saturations are out of out of proportion, or we've got pHs that are out of whack, or our organic matter levels are way low. There's a number of triggering factors that we look at on a soil test that help us kind of define how that system is or isn't working. Okay. So that's the first step. The next step is to assure them that they need to start thinking about reduced tillage or no tillage. They need to start thinking about more diversity in their system, not just corn and beans or not just a few crops. They need to be thinking outside the box. And that might require them thinking about finding some livestock in the equation, right? Whether they provide feed for livestock or they provide an opportunity for somebody to graze livestock. Again, all of these things are part of the principles here, right? And I and I tell these guys that yes, you can keep doing what you're doing, but you're gonna keep getting what you got. Right? So y I think they need to rethink. And I've got great really great examples of some clients that since that time, when they saw the advantages of no till and they saw the advantages of keeping armor on the soil and and and and more diversity and including cattle. Magical things happened within just a few short years, Jamie. A couple, three or four years and they saw massive changes in their soil system. speaker-1: And so let's let's say we've reached that five year point. In your in your mind, what does success look like? What what have the the changes and impacts been to to know that we were successful? speaker-0: When you take a spade out into that healthy system, or a probe, or both, and that's those are my two tools I carry with me in the summertime, you know the minute you walk on that soil, first of all, that something's good. Right? When you stab that probe or that spade into that soil and it dives down in there unrestricted, and you pull up what looks like chocolate cake and it's alive and it smells good, that's success. You look Visually across the field, and whatever crop might be growing out there is thriving and it's uniform, it's consistent. You see insects, you hear birds, you see beneficial insects feeding on bad guys on the plant. You see all these things happening. And you compare that to walking out into a healthy pasture, and you see the same things, right? That's success. That is success. speaker-1: Yeah. All right. Why don't you go ahead and and sum up this soil armor conversation, Brian? We've covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. ⁓ I think folks are gonna listen and re listen to this because there's a lot of little things in here that we've talked about. Sum it up for me and ⁓ leave ⁓ with something sure to to take away. speaker-0: So soil armor is really important. What we don't want to see when we walk into a field is bare soil. It's like having bare skin on your body. ⁓ you're subject to infections, you're subject to all kinds of things that can happen to the internal parts of your body. The soil is the same way. It's a living, breathing biological system that needs protection. That soil armor is is paramount in keeping that consistently. fluctuating temperatures, it protects it from the heavy rains, it protects us from the the wind erosion, it protects it from the heating and the cooling by flattening out those temperature swings. It does so many things to protect that soil at multiple levels. But most importantly at that top two to three inches, it really, really goes a long way in protecting that. And I think that really is the first step in healing that soil. speaker-1: So step one in creating a healthy soil system. keeping good soil armor, good cover on the ground that we're using, whether it's farm ground or pasture ground, because we've we've all been in those places that have been grazed to nothing and that isn't any healthier speaker-0: It's the same. speaker-1: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Field Notes. We talked about soil armor today. ⁓ the next segment will cover the next principle of of soil health and ⁓ we're excited to continue on with this with this conversation. We'll catch you next time. Welcome back to Field Notes. Third segment. ⁓ joined by Brian Jorgensen. COO of Farming Operations. Do I have that correct? ⁓ farming boss man at Jorgensen Land Cattle. speaker-0: Pretty close. That's better. speaker-1: We talked about soil health in the last episode, and then we talked about soil armor being the first principle of that soil health. We're gonna step into the second principle. And everything in the second principle is based around disturbance. So, Brian, would you just describe what disturbance means to you? Yeah. And then we'll start into why we like low disturbance. speaker-0: Yeah. So the first thing people think of when they think of disturbance is tillage. And that's true. Tillage is very much a disturbance, but it goes far beyond that. Disturbance can be defined in a soil system as anything that if that affects the chemical, the physical, or the biological portion of that soil. So let's just talk about a pasture. Disturbance in a pasture would be overgrazing or fertilizer application or an insecticide application, any of those things that and it doesn't matter if it's in a rangeland or if it's in a crop ground, anything that we do from a management perspective to change the physical, the biological, the chemical portion of that soil is truly defined a disturbance. speaker-1: So ⁓ not to chase a rabbit here, Brian but some of those things you mentioned we view as very positive things that we think we're doing. ⁓ would would you just elaborate a little bit there as to, you know, we're gonna talk about low disturbance. ⁓ doesn't mean no disturbance, but even some of those things we think are positive, maybe we're not necessarily doing the right thing all the time. Right. speaker-0: That's right. Right. Not every disturbance is terrible. Some disturbances are necessary both from an economical and an ecological standpoint. They just we just have to do them. Some disturbances happen just by way of doing what we do. Planting, spraying, combining, grazing, any of those activities are disturbances, right? What we have to understand is the level of disturbance that they're that's taking place. And all three chemical, physical, biological aspects of that soil. And just keeping in mind that the lowest amount of disturbance, the better. Okay. Any any disruption is gonna start creating an imbalance in the system. So we just have to bear in mind that any disturbance is detrimental. Right. Just whether or not it's economic or not. speaker-1: So you you framed that up with ⁓ with a pasture land to start with. Let let's talk about you you use Jorgensen land and cattle a lot as a as a reference point. So let's talk about the main disturbances that happen both on a grazing land situation and then on your farm ground. Sure. And and just kind of talk about the most common disturbances that happen. And I know you mentioned some of them already, but but let's dive a little bit deeper. speaker-0: So ⁓ traffic across the fields in terms of ⁓ whether we're planting or harvesting, ⁓ you're creating a compaction level at some point in that soil system, whether it's the tractor tracks, the the hoof tracks of the animals, each one of those is is a compaction ⁓ event in the soil. That's a disturbance. So compaction in and of itself. Is detrimental in that it compresses the oxygen out of the soil colloids. And if you are aerobic microbe who depends on living and breathing like we do, needs oxygen and water. Well, guess what? When you compact the soil, you create an anaerobic environment. Therefore, those aerobic microbes don't do well. Also, you've squeezed the moisture out and you've also taken the ability of that soil to Take in water, take in oxygen, and be able to support biological life. So that's compaction, right? We do that, that happens. It just happens. ⁓ the other thing is when we apply fertilizers beside the row or in the row when we're planting, we're disrupting that chemical balance in that system by adding sodium or Phosphor phosphorus or nitrogen or sulfur, we're changing the chemical environment in that system. Even though it might be in a small microcosmic area, we're changing that environment. So that's a disturbance, okay? Some good, some bad. Right. But they have to be able to equalize. So when you talk about a native system, you know, you talk about overgrazing. That's a that's a classic example of a disturbance where you're putting too many cattle out in a confined space for far too long. They're eating the vegetation down, they're compacting the heck out of the soil, and it just takes a lot longer for that plant to recuperate, and that soil has to come back into balance. So that's really how you define it. So the activities of farming. Obviously, we have to go across the fields. So we try and minimize the amount of trips that we make. We try and use different things like controlled traffic patterns or keeping the the wheel tracks in the same from different pieces of equipment in the same track as much as possible. And so when you do those things, you start lowering the disturbance levels. The other thing I will tell guys is that. If we have work towards maintaining or building and maintaining organic matter levels at or above three percent, the higher that number above three percent, the more resilient the soil is and the more traffic it can handle. A pasture, for example, is around five to six percent. Well, you can get a two-inch rain in our pastures and immediately go out and drive on those pastures. Why? Because they have a soil system that can take that water in, they have a root system that can support the weight. Our fields are almost the same way. So those are things that you have to think about when you think about disturbance. The first thing farmers usually think about is, you know, how much disturbance are they using when they plant their corn or plant their soybeans? Right. And that's obviously a big deal. We want equipment on that planter to minimize the amount of soil we're moving. Obviously we want a no-till if we can. Right. If we're tilling, that's a major disturbance. Major disturbance. I call that a nuclear holocaust in the soil. speaker-1: So and and why don't you dive just a little bit deeper there because something we're something we're gonna talk about too is necessary versus habitual. How often is tillage necessary? How often is it habitual? speaker-0: So it really depends a lot on where you are geographically and what your cropping system really is. So in our part of the world where I would consider us to be an arid environment, you know, we're under twenty-two inches of rainfall a year, we're trying to conserve as much moisture as we can. And obviously anybody that's no-tilled here knows that when we no-till we conserve moisture. We we tend to build it. Now as you move further east, Where the wetter rainfall patterns and they're not running a real intense rotation where they're not using all their moisture, then tillage sometimes becomes necessary just for them to be able to get into their fields. And so then in a case like that, I don't recommend full tillage. I recommend a strip till application. So they can create a strip where they're gonna plant that next crop. They can put some biology in that strip if they want to. If they want, they can put some nutrient. But what they're really doing is they're they're darkening that strip of soil and loosening it just so it evaporates a little bit and also so that it darkens that soil so it warms up quicker in the spring. speaker-1: Yeah. So we've really kind of defined what disturbance is and a little bit of the the types of common disturbances that we do on a day-to-day basis. Dive a little bit deeper into we just talked about tillage as being necessary versus habitual. From a Jorgensen Landon cattle standpoint. What were things when you started making adaptions towards a true soil health model that were habitual things that you had to work through as a group to where you found what was necessary versus what was habitual? speaker-0: Right. Well, it would I would take you back to the prior to the mid nineteen eighties when we started working with no till systems. And at that time I have to tell you it was difficult because there wasn't a lot of equipment. There wasn't a lot of knowledge. A lot of what we did we developed ourselves or we watched a few neighbors. But prior to that it was tillage is our predominant system. And so that was a bit of a learning curve for especially the the generations that d had done that all their lives. And I see that basically anywhere we go, anywhere I've traveled and talked to farmers, they tend to go back to center in terms of what they've always done, what their comfort level is. And they really don't want to step out of that. But when we stepped away from the tillage thing in 1991, we went 100% full throttle into no-till. I went so far as to take the wheels off the tillage equipment, so it wouldn't be a temptation to drag it around. We very quickly started to see changes in that soil system. And that was, I think, the first step, and we didn't know what soil health meant at that point. We didn't, we weren't trying to define the imbalances that we were trying to fix. We didn't know those. All we knew is that we were trying to save moisture and we were trying to save time and money. But what we saw were subtle, in some cases, significant changes in the way that soil is starting to. So I don't know if I answered the question the way you wanted me to, but that's how I remember that change started to happen. Right. And it wasn't until the mid-90s when we started looking at a different way of balancing the soil chemically and not putting as much dry fertilizer on, and in some cases we quit doing any, and changed the way we managed our fertility program, and then started changing the way our planters were set up. We progressively got better and better and better. With each step we found an improvement in the system. Right. speaker-1: And and that was where you you very eloquently got to the the point that I was wanting to get to that it's things like all your biologicals going in at one time, planning time where you're reducing the number of trips across that field. Yep. And that's correct. In a please tell me if I'm at all off base with this, but in a no-till system, reducing the number of trips across the field is a fairly important part of of what you're doing. So so I guess that kind of necessary versus habitual, you've always made this trip across the field with this biological at this time. Having to break that habit of say we still need to apply that, but can we apply it? speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: at a different time when we're making a absolutely necessary trip across that field. Yeah. Is that does that kinda get to the to the base of what necessary versus habitual? speaker-0: Yes, and I'll give you another really good example and I kind of touched on it with the fertilizer. But think about and there's a lot of guys that are still doing this habitually, and that's applying a lot of excess fertilizer on the surface of the of the soil. ⁓ and that's a separate application aside from planting. Well it was in the mid-1990s that that's when that change occurred here at JLC, is we we quit doing that altogether. And we ⁓ we put Components on the planting systems, whether it was the air seeder or the planter, to be able to put smaller amounts of the macronutrients N, P, and K, in most cases N and N and P, at or beside the row. Okay, beside the row or in the row. And the first thing we did when we did that is we eliminated eliminated a pass or an application. Second thing we did is we lowered the concentration levels of the nutrient by 30 to 50 percent. The third thing we did is we put it in an area that was the most efficient for the plant. So those are cases where we stepped out of that old habit of just dry spreading a bunch of nutrient on the surface and not really having any control over that nutrient was going to end up and how, in what form, to a system that was much more defined, lower in cost and higher in efficiency. And it was that. That was a huge major step in terms of economics for us. To give you an example, the first air seeder that we purchased, I want to say it was around 2006, 2007, had the ability to put dry nutrient between every other row. Well, that savings alone on that piece of equipment saved us about eighty thousand dollars just in application costs, secondary application costs alone, not to mention the savings in fertility. That machine virtually paid for itself the first season that we owned. speaker-1: And so again, I go back to my my base, which is nutrition. And we start talking about it's things like putting if I'm using a a a blended feeder, TMR mixer, putting my mineral in the feed that I'm delivering. Now I've reduced my mineral hogs, I've reduced I have made that system more efficient by delivering what's needed. In that case every day, in your case delivering what's needed at the right time and reducing a pass. speaker-0: Exactly. I'll take you where we are today. Let's just talk about a corn plant. So our corn planter is a double disc opener, which, if properly maintained and set, will cut a very thin slice through residue and place the seed directly where we want it. But before that opener hits the ground, we're moving just enough residue so that we don't create a hairpinning situation. We're not driving residue down and getting pinched in the seed furrow. We don't want that. But we don't want to move so much residue that we're leaving that soil bare. Okay? Yep. So that's first thing is managing the residue. Then we're placing between that residue manager and the seed opener four inches to the side, we're using another single disc opener that cuts a very narrow slice in the ground. And we're placing Nitrogen and sulfur in a band along with ⁓ a product with kelp in it to help stabilize the nitrogen in that band. And that band of fertilizer is all that plant's gonna get for the rest of the season. And it's about sixty pounds of nitrogen, sixty to sixty-five pounds. So there's that. So that's an efficiency right there. Plus with the sulfur, we're acidifying that band, right? Right. We're creating a disturbance, but we're acidifying that band, which is better for the microbes because you're helping them mineralize those nutrients, right? It's a disturbance, but it's a good one. Let's follow that with the seed. The seed's being placed precisely in that furrow. It's getting a phosphate, which is a disturbance. But it's an orthophosphate, which plant desperately needs. In cold, wet conditions, it can get it available to the plant. It's also being flooded with microbes so that we colonize that root and that seed immediately to start that nutrient transfer to the plant. We're also putting micronutrients in there. There's all kinds of things that we're doing to create a disturbance, but we feel like that disturbance is outweighing the deficiencies. All the while we're doing this, we're creating a very low disturbance system on the top. So we don't open that soil up and we don't create a dark spot and we don't create a bare soil system. speaker-1: And so what this leads into, I think, for for those that are watching along with us. Number one, I I'm gathering that by using these practices, even just the first two that we've talked about. Good soil biology can replace steel. speaker-0: Absolutely. Absolutely. Steel can't touch what biolog biology can do. speaker-1: So we're setting up a system where we're not sacrificing what that system can do. speaker-0: That's correct. speaker-1: Now we're we're not out there thinking that that we're gonna make this feeder steering eighteen hundred. That's my comparison to it. We're not swinging for the fences, but we're not sacrificing what that system can produce. speaker-0: I think ultimately, Jamie, on to that point, is I think we're we're we're giving the system the ability to do a lot more on its own. So we're creating an opportunity for that system to rebound and and do it itself. I mean we're helping it along with just the right amount of things at the right time in the right place. But ultimately we're creating that environment with the low disturbance and the armor to build and get more efficient. speaker-1: Yep. We're we're building it to where we can ask that system to work for us rather than us work for the system. So there's some management realities that come with this mindset. When somebody's gonna go into a a low disturbance mindset after they've been say a full tillage and the other end of the spectrum. What are some things from a management standpoint that they need to be thinking about? ⁓ equipment, timing, ⁓ any any guidance there that you can set somebody up with to say, you know, maybe even give them baby steps for the first few years of coming into it. Yep. Right. speaker-0: Well again, you know, if they've been in in a tillage system, ⁓ again, I call that a nuclear holocaust because they've disrupted the natural webbing of the microbes and the and the fungi and all the things, the biological things that live, whether they're macro species or micro species, they create in a no-till environment, they create all kinds of an ⁓ extremely complex environment that when you till it, it basically blows all out of. pieces. So you've you've taken a lot of the biological activity out of the soil. So the first thing they're gonna be dealing with is a soil that probably doesn't have a lot of structure. And that's difficult. It's difficult to get planters through, especially if it's wet. ⁓ it's likely to be very compacted. ⁓ so there's a lot of hurdles that they're gonna have to overcome. My suggestion usually is to get themselves in a situation where they can Put it into alfalfa for a while or an alfalfa grass mixture for a few years. I know sometimes that just doesn't work because they don't have a market for it, but they want what I want to see is an environment that's created that has a tremendous amount of roots, a cereal grain, for example, where when you bring roots back into the system, and we'll talk about this again in in later segments, you create an environment for biology to flourish. The number one key thing. in the transition to a low disturbance system is getting biology back in the soil. Once you have that, if the biology there, then your system is starting to function. And it's easier to fix once you have biology back in that in that system. speaker-1: And so I guess this this ties back into what we talked about last time, Brian, but ⁓ you talking about going to an alfalfa or an alfalfa grass kind of triggered this and you mentioned cereals. You know, if somebody is a doesn't have a market, cereals leaving the straw, back to our soil armor conversation, that's maybe a starting point there of We're leaving as much biology behind as we can. Yep. ⁓ is a cover crop a big factor there as well? speaker-0: Big big and you'll learn in in the next couple principles that all of these are progressively tying themselves together. speaker-1: Absolutely. Absolutely. And boy, that just triggered my my cover crop thought. ⁓ when it comes to compaction, do you view your cover crop blend as something to help combat some of that compaction on these farm yes farm grounds? speaker-0: Yes, I mean so we're using some species within cover crops that are designed to be tap deep taprooters that bust through just through growth, just bust through those compaction layers. You know, the other thing is we rely on nature. We hopefully have moisture going into the winter and we hope we have a deep three or four or five foot freeze. Yep. That in itself is a huge compaction buster. So but back to your original question about transitioning back to or into a no-till system, it does not happen overnight. It's a it's a committed process of three to five to six years of once you start seeing significant positive changes. It just I've seen it happen a million times, Jamie, where guys will transition and they don't have quite the right equipment or quite the right rotation and they fail and they blame No till. Well that that no till just doesn't work. Well, they didn't understand that they have to fix that imbalance that they've created first. speaker-1: Right. And it's it's maybe not And not to pick on the universities, but it it's hearing it at the seminars, thinking you're gonna implement it, but not having somebody on your on your team, whether it's a a member of your team, Brian, or somebody else's team, but a member on your team saying, Look, we we gotta stay the course. Exact. This doesn't happen overnight. Yeah. And we we have to be willing to go through these growing pains. Right. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: to get to here. It's no no different than somebody shortening up their Kevin with speaker-0: Exactly. speaker-1: If you're gonna go from turning the bulls out for ninety days to sixty, yes, you're gonna see a higher open cow rate the first year and that's just something that we have to get through to get to your end goal. speaker-0: Exactly. And so they the other thing is they have to be disciplined in creating a multi-year plan. Okay. Not just this year, but what's gonna happen the next three, five years, six years down the road. You need to implement that plan can change. Right. That's fine. But the plan that you create today is a long range plan to help you make the right decisions today. Because if you do something wrong today and forget about it and then change your course and try and do something that you shouldn't because of a herbicide application or or bad rotation, that's gonna cost you. That's gonna cost you. You need to have a plan. speaker-1: Right. And I think that that ties back into the episode that Nick and I did about you know, we talked a lot about strategic planning and that we do it here maybe more intensely than than your average operation will do, but everybody still needs to do it. Because that's how you get to the end goal and achieving the metrics of success you're looking for. speaker-0: Exactly. Right. So yeah, when I develop a crop rotation plan, for example, and this goes back to, you know, trying to protect the armor and and doing things to, you know, low disturbance, trying to get efficiency. So I look back as far as two thousand my spreadsheet goes back clear back to two thousand eight. So I know what was on that field every year since two thousand eight and I can look at the pattern and I can see what worked, what didn't, and I can adjust as we go. So but you need to have a mechanism and I'm not saying you have to be an Excel expert, but you need to have some type of a mechanism to create a plan and then record that activity. So you know what you've done and you can manage your risks through trial and error and through the results of what you've done. Otherwise you're gonna forget and Things will just happen again. Again, you know, it's one of those things. You keep on doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep on getting what you always got. speaker-1: And a lot of this low disturbance conversation that we've had, Brian, it it sounds to me like we're gonna have some upfront input costs with equipment. Yep. But we're checking a lot of boxes on cost reduction as well. Absolutely. Would you go ahead and just kind of touch on that side of it and and how you view that as well tying into this low disturbance? speaker-0: Well from a from a from an absolute equipment standpoint, ⁓ a planter, a sprayer, and a harvester. ⁓ you don't need a custom applicator. You don't need somebody spreading a bunch of dry fertilizer. If you set the equipment up to planter properly, everything all your all your planting and fertility work can be done in one pass. ⁓ if you're managing your rotations well and you're system's pretty well balanced one or two passes with your sprayer per crop is sufficient. Obviously you're going to have a harvesting pass. So what do you have? Five passes there? Maybe six tops. That is a huge number. When you start multiplying ⁓ custom application rates between ten and thirty five forty dollars an acre, that adds up very, very quickly. Secondly, if you look at Your fertility, if you can cut your fertility needs by thirty to sixty, seventy percent, that is a huge number. If you're spending a hundred dollars an acre today or two hundred and fifty, cut that by a third or a half, that's real dollars. So those are huge equations that need to be calculated in order to make those decisions. From a labor standpoint, if you're paying somebody to twenty to thirty dollars an hour today, ⁓ If you cut your labor down significantly per acre by taking tillage out of the equation or a fertilizer application or whatever that cost is, you're reducing your labor needs. That's a huge number. Fuel, huge number. We spend on average of about six tenths of a gallon per acre on any activity we do. It's between six tenths and one point three gallons per acre on any activity. We know what that number is. Right. If we were tilling, it'd probably be four or five times that number. So all of these things come into into play here. speaker-1: So from what I what I've gathered, we're gonna get to reduce costs and reduce some inputs. Plus we're gonna build again from the soil armor into lowering our disturbance, we're building a more resilient environment. speaker-0: Bingo. And saving money. And increasing return on investment. And more importantly, we're increasing soil health. Right. speaker-1: And saving money. So what would be things I'm gonna slip into this low disturbance and we've started into this project. Three to four years down the road, what are some things that I'm gonna see aside from what we've talked about from an economic standpoint, that side of it? What are some visual indicators we're gonna see in ⁓ if you have some soil chemistry indicators that we're gonna see that we're making an impact on our soil health? speaker-0: Well, if you're if you're watching a soil test, for example, ⁓ you're gonna see increased organic matters. You're gonna see ⁓ the beginnings of your base saturation numbers becoming beginning to come back into balance, what nature intended them to be. Your pHs may adjust a little bit. ⁓ And so from a from a chemical standpoint, you're gonna see those things. Physically you're gonna see more residue on the surface. So more armor, right? ⁓ you're gonna see more resilience in your growing crop, you're gonna see more uniformity in your growing crop across the field, through all different changes of soil types, you're gonna see more uniformity. ⁓ you may perhaps in in really good years see significant yield increases. On dry, tough years, you're gonna see less reduction in yield. So you're gonna see more resilience. And each year that passes, all of these things are gonna get more and more noticeable as we become more and more closer to balance in that system. ⁓ and so potentially you're gonna start raising more more and more crop all the time with less and less input. It progressives it's progressive, it keeps getting better. speaker-1: We did not do this in the first two segments and now I'm I'm feeling silly, Brian. Define organic matter for those at home. And we may absolutely we may clip this and put it into the episodes we've done previously. speaker-0: And that's fine. To me, organic matter is the best way I define it to people, that number is the fuel tank on a race car. The bigger the tank, the longer it's gonna run, right? The fuel tank in the soil system is organic matter, and that is what drives the microbial system in our soil. That's the food source. Okay. That is if the bigger the tank you have, the more microbial life you can support. And Microbial life is the exchange function of the soil. The plant is creating the sugars and the carbohydrates from photosynthesis, driving those down into the root, out the root exudates, trading those, that carbon and carbohydrate for nutrients, and the microbe is the exchange mechanism. So organic matter drives that system. The higher the organic matter level, the more efficient your soil potentially can become. If it's balanced, because we have more microbes, we have more fungi. The system gets more robust. So that's where your efficiency comes from. speaker-1: And you're gonna find the the bulk of that organic matter in the top three inches. speaker-0: Top three inches. That's where eighty five percent of the plant's activity happens. It's in that top three inches. speaker-1: And and so we talk about tillage and then we're talking about three inches of our our organic matter. speaker-0: It's getting burned up in a tillage system. speaker-1: And so and even ⁓ even not leaving soil soil armor, not making sure we have residues left behind, is leaving the top layer of that top three inches available to do damage to what your organic matter can be. Exactly. I correct on that. speaker-0: Right. And so your rotations are gonna have an implication ⁓ effect on your organic matter levels. ⁓ how you harvest what you remove in terms of carbon, straw, fodder, that has an implication on organic matter. How heavy you graze it has an implication or effect on organic matter. So all of these things are part of that. And so if we go back to soil armor again, that's organic matter. That in itself is organic matter. That's all gonna be cycled eventually ⁓ and mineralized into usable plant nutrients. speaker-1: So I don't necessarily think we would talk about this in a from a farming standpoint. Is there a situation where a soil system heals itself? speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-1: So take a piece of pasture ground that was overgrazed, if if we leave it alone for X number of years, it will eventually kill itself. speaker-0: To a point. So Mother Nature has a ⁓ innate ability to put something on bare soil. She does not want or like bare soil. The first thing that will come is a weed. She wants a living root. She wants something growing in that system. Eventually it'll come back to a native state, but it takes a long, long time. ⁓ there's gonna be a lot of transition from weeds to a grass. Mostly an unwanted perennial grass that really doesn't do anybody much good, but that's the first thing that's gonna come back. And if it's managed through the principles that we're talking about, it'll get there quicker. If it's not managed this way, including livestock, it probably will take for a long, long time to get back into it. But yes, the mother nature has a healing system. In fact, I know of people that have gone into desert situations and brought back vegetation by implementing livestock into by implementing these five principles. And they brought it back into a a living, growing green system. speaker-1: So I have one more big question involving disturbance. What is the disturbance that is the hardest to notice but does the most long-term damage? What's the one thing we do that we don't notice that is the worst for our system? speaker-0: Yeah. I would say it's probably compaction. ⁓ just simply because we're driving through the activities that we are doing and our equipment isn't getting smaller, it's getting bigger and heavier. And just the implications of compressing the oxygen out of that of that soil colloid and that's that's a huge deal. ⁓ I mean there's a lot of other factors, but to me it's the one that ⁓ it's probably the hardest one for us because of the amount of harvest equipment that we use in a in an average season. Eighty-five percent of our acres are going to a a feed crop, right? So we're putting a lot of excess traffic and that's why it's so important to get a r living root back out there. And but I think compaction is one of our biggest nemesis. speaker-1: Yeah. Brian, put a bow on what the principle of low disturbance really means and sum this conversation up. I think there's been a lot of good things that we've that we've visited about here. speaker-0: Yeah. So a disturbance isn't just what we see from a physical standpoint. It's not just tillage. It's not just ⁓ you know, how we how we manage that system. It's it's everything that we do to it. It's the it's the chemical side, it's the herbicides and the fertilizers that we're putting on. That's a disturbance. It's it's the the way that we're harvesting, that's a disturbance. It's how long we're keeping livestock out there or how little organic matter we leave. All of those things, anything that we do. in the activity, we're we're creating some sort of a disturbance. What we have to be able to identify is which of those disturbances are necessary and which ones aren't, and try and minimize the amount of damage that we're doing. speaker-1: And I think important to note at this point, some disturbances are beneficial. Sure. ⁓ like on your farm ground with the hoof going on it, that is a beneficial disturbance at that point. It is. speaker-0: Yes, absolutely. And so we can sacrifice as long as our system is healthy and balanced and our organic matter levels are up, we can take a lot more. It's more resilient. It's important to note that when we're grazing, we're cycling nutrients. So we're we're benefiting from cycling the residues into usable nutrients, plus we're getting added biology to the system. Those are offsetting some of the detrimental effects of the of the compaction. So You have to be able to balance those. But just bear in mind that anything that we do in that system is truly a disturbance. speaker-1: I believe that's gonna wrap up our segment on disturbances. Thank you guys for watching, and be sure to tune in as we go to ⁓ principle number three of the five principles that we're gonna go through on soil health. Thank you for joining me again, Brian. As always, thank you, producer Boston. He's been missed the last couple episodes. We love Boston, he puts up with a lot. Thank you guys for watching, and we will catch you next time. Thank you all for tuning in to the source. speaker-0: Thank you. speaker-1: We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to come back on july first to catch the second part of this conversation with Brian Jorgensen on ISS and the soil health principles. Thank you guys again for checking in.