Latest / Conservation Stories / Roundtable with Kyle Bingham, Jeremy Brown, and Lacy Cotter-Vardeman

Transcript

Roundtable with Kyle Bingham, Jeremy Brown, and Lacy Cotter-Vardeman · Conservation Stories

• 0:06
  Speaker A: Welcome. Thank you for joining us for this new series on conservation stories. I'm Tillery Timmins Sims and I'm the director of operations here for the Sandhill Area Research Association. I hope you will enjoy this series as we follow people who align with our values and our mission here of stewarding our land and our water. Thanks for joining us. Hello, friends, and welcome back to conservation stories. I am glad to say that we have some good friends here with us today. All three of these folks around me are local farmers in the Lubbock area, and we're going to have a conversation about different types of farming practices and what that can mean for production of cotton. We have a lot of folks in the back end of the supply chain, those brands and retailers that are wanting cotton grown specific ways. Why can't everyone grow cotton the same way? And that's the conversation we want to have today. And I'm going to let these folks introduce themselves. Let's start with Jeremy. Jeremy Brown, Broadview agriculture.
• 1:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Fifth generation cotton farmer here in south Plains of Texas. However, my dad decided to have a career change when I was in college, so there was a little break, had to start all over. The joke is I found a girl that her dad married, her dad farmed, and my wife thinks sometimes I just married her because her dad farmed. And I jokingly say, when you're honoring maybe I do. We farm about 5000 acres. Out of that 5000, about 3500 certified organic. We got back into production agriculture in 2008, really with nothing. I had to start, start all over and. But yeah, it's evolved to where people ask me what my operation is. I would say it's a regenerative organic farm. I hope in the next five to ten years to be all 100% organic, but leaning more to the livestock side of the business.
• 2:09
  Speaker A: And we're going to visit a little bit later and get into some more details because I really like your, the story behind why you're doing what you're doing. It's really interesting. So, and then, of course, I think everybody will remember Lacey. Lacey Vardaman, the founder of Sandhill Area Research association. You want to give a little wrap up just about yourself in case this is somebody's first time, in case you.
• 2:33
  Speaker C: Haven'T met me, I'm Lacy Cotter Vardaman. I come from a long line of cattlemen. I'm the fifth generation to run my family's ranching operation and my kids are actively running it. Currently. I got to step back a little bit. I still do the AI and I love animals. I love ag, but I really love cattle. Side love cotton. I married cotton in 1996 and grew up hoeing cotton my whole life. And so it was just kind of a natural progression for us to integrate those two. And it took a little bit, but now I can't imagine doing cotton without cattle. So, Jeremy, good luck. It's one of those things when you start adding the cows in. It just is a true game changer. My husband fought me forever on that and yeah, now he's like, well, we'll bring the girls down. So anyway, I love everything ag, and I enjoy learning about different ways that people farm and what they do, different types of ag that I know nothing at all about. And I've had some fabulous conversations with both Jeremy and Kyle, and I'm always just interested in what they're doing. It's fascinating to me.
• 3:51
  Speaker A: Kyle, why don't you give us a little bit of background about you?
• 3:53
  Speaker D: Sure. Well, thanks for having me. So, Kyle Bingham. I'm with Bingham family Farms. We've got 2000 acres of certified organic crops, and then we also have 200 acres of vineyard. My dad started the, he likes to call himself the conservationist or that regenerative journey 30 years ago when we got into the certified organic side of the business. And then as we continued that journey, he was always looking for better rotational crops, other things to commoditize that we can sell alongside the cotton. And that at a certain point, realized the value of our water is so important that that became one of the key factors in what are we going to irrigate and what are we not going to. And so more and more we're moving toward. We're almost, I think we're going to be 100% dry land cotton this year with certified organic, with a regenerative approach to it. And then most of our water is going to be going to our vineyards where we're right now we're doing about 20,000 cases a year for our own label, and then we do private labels and different, different products for other wineries as well. So we processed almost a thousand tons of fruit at the vineyard, at the winery this year. So we stay busy. I think we've got, like everyone else, we've got way too many things we're doing right now.
• 5:10
  Speaker A: So finding a good market.
• 5:12
  Speaker D: Yep.
• 5:13
  Speaker A: I like that your dad understands the value of what he's done over the years, and I've known Kyle's family forever. And actually Jeremy's grandparents and my grandparents were neighbors for many, many years. And I remember, you know, just telling on myself when. When the Binghams started doing organics, and I was kind of one of those. That is crazy. It's a fad. It'll go away. It'll end, you know, very much stuck in that mindset of, you know, that the way that we've done things for all these years was the right thing to do or we wouldn't be doing it, you know, and really just not even interested. You know, we did try a few things from time to time. We did sesame, and we were some of the first to grow peanuts, but we weren't a lot of, you know, thinking outside the box very much. And just over the years, as I've been able to, you know, go to different areas and meet different people and cross paths with folks like Lacy and just see the pioneering spirit that's happening here and seeing the success, it's kind of made me eat crow. So we really wanted to have this conversation to showcase the different methods of production that you all are using and to show that each one of these are viable methods and that the people that are doing these methods can be neighborly, can get along. You know, we have, you know, some issues now in the high plains with some chemical drift issue. That's really caused a lot of social problems inside our culture, dividing people. You know, the way I farm is impacting the way you farm, but I've been here longer, or well, but that can't last. Y'all know what I'm talking about. It's just back and forth, and it's an unfortunate time because we really need to be. We need to be working together collectively in Ag. There's a lot of changes that are coming. Some of the ideas and practices that people want implemented are viable, and we can do them and some aren't. You know, and we need to be able to work together as a collective to support agriculture. So let's kind of backtrack a little bit. And, Jeremy, let's go back to you and talk about the different types of. So organic. You can call both organic. Lacy is not organic. What? Just give us a short rundown on what that means, you know, like third grade level. What does it take for you to be organic?
• 7:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, the basics are you can't, you know, you can't use any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides or chemicals. No non gmo's. You know, that's. That's the. Probably the basics. I think most people can get that. They can understand that. So therefore, you know, you're, you're limited on the tools that you have available to grow the crop. And so that's where I feel like the creativity comes into place when you don't, you know, I tell people a lot of times we have easy buttons. You know, like when Roundup came on the scene, it became the easy, budding, easy button for weed management. Well, as an organic farmer, I don't have that easy button. So, you know, and if I want to decrease my tillage, then I've got to be creative and try to really think outside the box or even just go back to old practices and techniques. So, yeah, I would think that would probably be the most basic. And you know how I got into organic, really, you know, Cliff Bingham, Kyle's dad, when he started growing organic peanuts in the nineties, my dad harvested his peanuts for him. We go way back to, in fact, almost kind of related in family, but so I got, I remember thinking the same thing, like, why would you be an organic farmer? When I say my dad had a career change, it was kind of forced. And that's how production agriculture can be. And so, but my love for farming, when I got back into it, I really had a drive to make this successful. And my ten years away from the farm, I had many other job opportunities where I was introduced to a lot of different production practices. I spent a lot of time in California, spent a lot of time working for a us congressman. And so I got to really see some just out of the box thinking. And so really, I guess, so I got, in 2010, we, my father in law, he said, look, I'll rent you a farm. And it was in CRP conservation reserve program, and he owned it and he wanted to put it back into production so I could immediately put it into organics. And so I did that. And anyways, as it evolved, you know, everybody's on a journey, I think, and where I am today is not where I was a year ago, and next year it'll be the same. And so, but what was interesting is my little organic farm was doing just fine without all these things that I was told I had to have or needed to have to be successful. And, and over here, I was making good yields but not making any money. And I was like, okay, something's not right here. That for me, this over here, I don't do anything. I plant old seed that we've caught. And anyway, so it just, it just fit, you know, it just seemed like an bottom line. Yeah, it came, that that was probably a big motivation early on, but now doing it, and I would say Kyle probably can feel the same way. When you've been doing it for so long, you begin to really believe in it.
• 10:55
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 10:55
  Speaker B: And even if it doesn't provide the premium that you get at times, I still would be an organic farmer. So, anyways, but that's, that's kind of the basics. If somebody were to ask, I mean, that's really, at the end of the day, we just have to be really creative.
• 11:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so you, you mentioned going back to some of those old practices. What, what is, what is that?
• 11:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:15
  Speaker A: Particular.
• 11:16
  Speaker B: Well, you know, there's a lot of ancient wisdom. I mean, guys in the days that didn't have the tools that are available now, mainly those tools are technology.
• 11:23
  Speaker A: Right.
• 11:24
  Speaker B: They had to be creative through rotations. They had to be creative through just tillage until its techniques. And so, yeah, we've had to use a lot of old tools, like a rotary hoe. That still works really well. Yeah, it works really good if you do it right in a timely manner. You know, one, Kyle would probably agree to this. Like, the biggest challenge I had was when you're a conventional farmer, you a lot of times won't go spray until you see a weed. Well, as an organic farmer, if you see a weed, you're too late. And that's just wisdom from the ages where they knew that you got to be really timely in your weed management. And so, yeah, it, it, yeah, there's just, you know, a lot of old techniques that we've been able to implement, but then technology comes along and you have gps systems on your tractors that can make you really get into fine tuning those techniques. And so, yeah, it's. But then you get into the regenerative aspects that I feel like coming along, that I feel like just mold together into the organics, what we do on.
• 12:30
  Speaker A: My farm, but, yeah, well, so Kyle's organic, and we're going to go back to Lacy here. We're going to kind of sandwich a conventional farmer more. I can't even. I wouldn't even say you're conventional. What would we even say that you are?
• 12:45
  Speaker C: In some ways, we're conventional in some ways. It's funny, I'm a crackpot, so I kind of, to me, and that's one of the things that I love, is visiting with different people because it's like so many of the things that they both Kyle and Jeremy do and say is like, it resonates and we do it a little bit. But farming is one of those fantastic things where it's multi generational, and then it's one of those things where it's horrible because it's multi generational. And so as time goes, the younger generations have a little bit different way of looking at things, but convincing the people who own the land and most of the assets of getting them to come along and stuff. In my family, my husband's 27 years older than I am, so he's 73, I think, and I'm 47. And we've got kids who are actively farming with us that are in their mid twenties and stuff. So we in one family alone are three generations, and we always have very interesting conversations. And then my father in law is still alive, who is 97, and so.
• 13:51
  Speaker A: So you really have actively have four.
• 13:53
  Speaker C: Generations, active generations, and nobody in our family is quiet with an opinion. And so, you know, which I love, if we did encourage that with our kids. Cause I did want them to learn at a young age that what you do now makes a difference. And you have to be quick to make decisions in AG and really in most businesses, and it's either gonna be good or bad and stuff. And so I wanted them to see and to know that what they're deciding now is going to make an impact later and stuff. And so it's been fun. We're definitely always trying different things. I'm curious about all things ag related, and I love to watch and see what other people are doing and try and figure out a way to start putting that into our operation. When I first brought cattle into our farming operation, he would have thought that I was trying to do something really horrible. But if you look back, and as Jeremy was saying, you look at what previous generations did, they always had animals, their rotation, practice, and in my family, our main ranch is in the northeastern part of New Mexico between Taos and Colorado. My family loves the dry areas, but there were a lot of times that we didn't run cattle because it was not sustainable. And so we were always going between sheep and the cattle and trying to manage. Of course, coming from that area, water was the only thing that you could make my dad mad about wasting. Cause if you wasted water, he came and glued, and I understand that completely now, but as a little kid, it's like, what's his deal? Yes, but so water management's always been something that's been foremost in my family's mind, coming from the arid state of northeastern New Mexico. And then, of course, when we brought everything down to Texas, we chose Bailey county, which apparently gets no rain now. So we liked the desert we run around 500 head to 600 head of cattle in a semi arid desert, and then we started incorporating that into our farming practices. And one of the things that is so interesting to see is, luckily, I met Veronica Acosta Martinez. And so instead of just saying, I see a difference, and we've been able to scientifically track those differences.
• 16:13
  Speaker A: She's an Ars USDA Ars researcher.
• 16:17
  Speaker C: And so, in 2017, we started tracking what our soil looked like before we added cattle into the rotation. And there is a scientific difference when you put cattle into it. And we've been able to cut our synthetic fertilizers because, like you were saying, how is this not penciling out? And it's funny to me, the people who make money off of you are the ones who are telling you you gotta suck it to it. No, you don't. So that's been interesting. We have landowners that, we've been farming their land since the sixties. Sixties. And they went out of business because they couldn't make a living farming it. And so they want to tell us how to farm it. And I just shake my head at that, and it's like, no, we're going to do this a little bit different. So one of the things I spend a lot of time doing is visiting with landowners and just people in general and explaining. These are the changes. When Dean and I got married in 1996, what we spend now in seed, we could farm for more than a year on. There's that big of a cost difference.
• 17:28
  Speaker A: The inputs always go up. They never go down.
• 17:30
  Speaker C: They never go down. But I mean, in what, roughly a 27 year time period, what we spend and seed alone, I mean, we could have farmed and spent a lot of money.
• 17:42
  Speaker A: So what does it look like, you know, for, you know, people that are listening or watching when you say that you're, you know, you brought your cattle on, what is. What does that actually look like?
• 17:53
  Speaker C: Well, we started planting winter wheat, and we do, depending on the year and whether it looks like we're going to get rain. And Steph will kind of plant different mixes and stuff. And I've enjoyed watching Jeremy's place because we. He farms down the road from and so constantly driving by it, and we're planning different things. We're bringing cattle in because it doesn't rain in Bailey county anymore.
• 18:19
  Speaker A: They need some food, and so they.
• 18:20
  Speaker C: Need some food, but they also, the way that we run them, provide free fertilizer for us. And we had really bad reniform nematodes and cater hake, who is a soil or scientist with cotton incorporated kept telling me that our soil was sterile and I couldn't understand that for some reason.
• 18:40
  Speaker A: What does that mean?
• 18:42
  Speaker C: Finally one day it hit me. And that's when we started working with Veronica to test the soil at that time. And then as we've made practice changes, we can show scientifically how that impacts what's going on in our soil.
• 18:57
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah. So you really, she's following like the microbial, the growth of the microbes in your soil and actually even doing the genetic well, and that was testing on those.
• 19:07
  Speaker C: That was super interesting to me that I guess I just didn't stop to think about was that she has been able to track the microbial wildlife in our soil, their family. And as soon as she pointed out that it was the same genetic family makeup, it all of a sudden just changed the whole way that I thought about that. And then I kind of laugh at myself frequently because it's like, I wonder why I never thought of that before and stuff. And so.
• 19:37
  Speaker A: So you guys dealt with your nematode issue, really, though, through the use of genetically modified cotton?
• 19:42
  Speaker C: We did, yes. Yes. Because prior to phytogen taking reniform nematodes seriously, we would not be in the cotton industry. People would drive by some of our land and wonder what we sprayed and it's like, nothing. That's reniform nematodes.
• 19:58
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 19:58
  Speaker C: But we saw something starting in the, I think, 1998, and we were trying to find out what it was. We worked with several different scientists at tech trying to figure out what was going on, but by then we had spread it to all of our other irrigated land. And at that time we were sand fighting. And so you always start in the same places on a farm, so you just started carrying it everywhere you went. When you're sand fighting, you're in a hurry. There's no time to stop, clean your plows off, and you're doing everything that you can to try and save what you have. But that's where cover crops come in, and we don't sand fight anymore. And there's been a completely different makeup of our genetic material in our soil. And it's just, it's one of those things that it's such common sense. And I look at it now and it's like, you're really stupid. Why? You know, we didn't, and we knew that we were spreading something. We didn't understand what it was at the time. By then, by the time we found out what it was, it was everywhere. It was everywhere. We were trying to figure out how we could handle it. Luckily, phytogen came in and they had some really good cotton. But it's not the answer. If we don't continue to work at it, it's going to come back. And, I mean, everything evolves and finds a way to keep working.
• 21:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, it almost reminds me of, like, preventative medicine or integrated medicine. Like, how can we prevent this instead of waiting until it's a big problem, and then we have a pill that we can take for the symptoms, when really what you're looking at is the root. And I think if you think about the thing that connects the three of you, that's really probably the foundation. Foundationally, the same. You have the same thing at heart, which is the life and the health of the soil. So, Kyle, give us a little background about kind of what organic practices looks like on y'all spine.
• 21:58
  Speaker D: Sure.
• 21:58
  Speaker A: And you guys have some interesting, because we saw your dry land this year and it was amazing.
• 22:03
  Speaker C: Have some fantastic dry land.
• 22:05
  Speaker D: Well, we picked up. So we've been running the 80 inch row. We were watching you do it, and then we were like, well, let's try that. And so we had a lot of success going to the 80 inch row, one seed per foot, lowering that plant population down. It's a journey, you know, we're still learning. My dad's been doing this for 30 years, and now he's switching his row spacing. This. This coming year, he's going to be almost 90% plus 80 inch row spacing. He doesn't, you know, making a big change like that, and he just. He's not. He's going to. He did it slowly, you know. All right, we saw it work somewhere else. Let's try a small, little bit on our here. And we ran a side by side. We had it, Jen, separately to see, like, how's it going to grade out? What's the yield? And, you know, that's. That's part of the journey. One thing I love to touch on when we start talking about what's organic, what's regenerative, what's a conservation, what does that all mean? The definitions are pretty simple. Certified organic just means you're going to document, document and validate and carry a certification that you are only using the allowed chemicals or you're not using the certain chemicals to maintain your organic certification. Regenerative just means you're farming with the intent of an improved ecological outcome in your soil. I mean, that's what we all do. That's what we're all doing. So at this point, any good farmer is a regenerative farmer, and it's going to look different here in Lubbock versus, you know, California, east coast, Midwest, it's going to look different. But the idea is you're farming to improve the soil with the tools you have with the crop you're going every year. That's all regenerative means. Um, and so that's, that's been a big part of where, where our journey's been, where we used to be cotton after cotton, and then we, we started running a pretty extensive rotation. That's a great way to kill your nematodes, because it does, it doesn't give them a constant feed source.
• 24:07
  Speaker A: And I think, I mean, I know back in the day, it's a good.
• 24:09
  Speaker D: Way to control them. Once that, once they're there, it's. That's different. It's a lot harder to get rid of them if you can keep them out.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: But that was one of the things that was pushing us towards peanuts back then.
• 24:19
  Speaker D: Yeah, peanuts back, yeah, back when we had better water, peanuts prices were better, too. We were able to do, we did a lot of peanuts back in the day.
• 24:30
  Speaker A: We did a lot of peanuts back in the day. We really did. There's still a lot here, but not as much as there used to be. Yeah. So Kyle was just saying, you know, regenerative basically is soil health first. So you're really in on, like, you've really kind of, I guess, become friends with a lot of the OG, you know, regen folks. You know, what would you, can you expand on that some? What would you, what would you give that definition? How would you define that for people that are like, what is this?
• 25:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think Kyle did a good job of, of, you know, a good explanation of what regenerative, for me, is just always trying to improve a degraded system. I mean, it's really what we're all dealing with, a system that's degraded from what the original design and creation was, especially out here in west Texas. I mean, we really are a prairie grass, and we're trying to make it not a prairie grass. And so we're really, we're really doing something that this land wasn't created to do. And so that's why I'm probably going more to livestock. I'm, even the land I personally own, I put back in the grass because it just does it so easy. That's another topic for another day. But anyway, so when I look at regenerative, you know, and I'll, you mentioned it a while ago, my story of how I got on the regenerative journey, was reading my Bible one day, and unashamedly I was reading in Matthew about the parable of the seed and the sower. And, you know, I read that passage I don't know how many times, and. But, you know, Jesus says, you know, and some seed fell on good soil and it reaped a harvest a hundredfold. And I just felt like God just said, Jeremy, what's good soil? And this is in 2013. And I did not have an answer for them. I mean, I just, all I knew is what I learned in college. All I knew is what I've been sold and taught by industry, by my salesmen, by my generational family members that farmed. And so that got me just almost crazy about soil health. And I just, I wasn't afraid to call people like Ray Archuleta and the gay browns and the guys like that because I couldn't find anybody here that would answer my questions. And Kyle's right. I mean, what works in Indiana doesn't work in West Texas. But the principles, there's, you know, they've identified six whole health principles that I feel like you can find a way for those principles to work on your farm. And it used to be five principles. And then, I don't know, three or four years ago or whatever, they came up with a 6th one and they put it to number one. And that says, you got to know your context. You got to know where you farm.
• 27:15
  Speaker A: Very good.
• 27:16
  Speaker B: And that's what I tell people a lot of times. Most of my neighbors don't understand that. The third, what is month on average in West Texas is September. Well, then why are you planting your cover crops in November when it's one of the driest months?
• 27:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 27:29
  Speaker B: And so when I had that aha. Moment, well, we start planting covers in August because on average, you're going to get rain in September. And so it's just those, using those things, like knowing your context is so key, you know? And so just following those six whole health principles, like limit your disturbance, you know, provide a living root at all times, which is a challenge in a dry climate diversity, that's a challenge in dry land. West Texas, I can't make money at Milo grain sorghum, where I farm. And so I'm pretty limited to Dryland Cotton. We've tried some alternative crops. So those markets are a challenge. You know, armor the soil well that we try to do the best we can with that. But when you're in an organic system and you got to use a little bit of tillage. That makes it a challenge. And so how do you mitigate that? So, yeah, that led me down the journey where I began to developed a decent friendship with Gabe Brown, who I consider the Og of regenerative agriculture. And I tell people, if you want to read a great book, dirt to soil is a great book. It's one of my favorites just because it's told from a farmer's perspective.
• 28:38
  Speaker A: So good.
• 28:39
  Speaker B: And I can relate to his story of he had like four years of bad financials and just was really had his back against the wall. Anyways, I had him out to the farm. That was a God deal in 2019, I believe. And we just developed a great friendship. Well, they created a group called regenified, which is a certifying group. And he reached out to me and he's like, hey, I'd like for you to consider becoming regeneified certified. I don't know if we'll ever have a market for your cotton, but I think it'd be cool to do. And so, you know, that I really don't care about the certification. I'm going to do it either, either way. But we were able to get that approved and done this last fall, so. But what I like about their system is they have a tier system. And so I was rated at a tier two, which I'm not proud of, but it motivates me. And they work alongside of you. How can we move this forward? And my tier two is going to is a challenge because of the tillage. There's a big group that think you should never till the soil. And, you know, I kind of have a little bit of strong opinions about some of that. Just because if the only way I can do no till is either grassland or spray rig, I have a problem with some of that. And so, you know, that that's me personally, so anyways, just, you know, but I like their group because they understand that there's, there's not just a box and you got a fitness box. We're all trying to make this work and so, you know, we'll see where that goes. And they gave me some great suggestions that's really making me think, okay, how can we make that work? Like, for instance, they said, what if you skip a cotton crop and just plant warm season covers and just graze for a whole twelve months? And I'm like, hadn't thought about that one. You know, that's going to be a challenge. I mean, I believe in it totally. That's not it. It's just you get a landowner that's used to that organic check.
• 30:34
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 30:34
  Speaker B: And how do you convince them? And that's where I'm like, well, maybe I should just get them all to do a cash lease, you know, where I can not deal with that.
• 30:42
  Speaker A: Yes, Lacy and I have discussed that so many times, you know, and as we have been working on ply lake restoration, we run into that problem a lot with landowners that, you know, you might, a farmer who could understand the importance of that playa lake and would be willing to, you know, we're not getting much value here. We can take that out. But you talk to land, a landowner about that, who, you know, maybe lives out of state or somewhere else, has never even seen that land, maybe. And they want, if it's going to impact my check, I'm not interested, you know, especially if they don't have a vested interest in our region, our area. They're not from here, they don't have roots here. They don't have that same type of connection. And long term, looking at, you know, this isn't a short term investment for me. This is long term.
• 31:37
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 31:38
  Speaker A: You know, and the societal choice really what we're talking about with the ply lakes is really something that is not a, you know, it's not something that you say as an individual, this is going to create. And although it can, and we've seen some places in lack, Lamb county where it has an immediate direct impact on a farm, but maybe it's not going to do that. So you're making that choice to restore that playa lake not for your own benefit, but for the benefit of people that are maybe not even living now because we're talking about a 500 year recharge is what they're thinking it would take. And so I wonder sometimes if that's something that we've lost in. We are a really great gritty group of folks, because who would stay here?
• 32:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:33
  Speaker A: You know, I mean, like, stick it out.
• 32:35
  Speaker B: I don't know if y'all see on the traces of Texas, but they posted a picture of the Llano Estacado from, like, I guess when they first found it.
• 32:43
  Speaker A: Like, oh, my.
• 32:44
  Speaker C: It was just.
• 32:44
  Speaker B: And the journal entries were like, no one should ever live out here. There's no water. You know, like, it was like, Cortez or somebody like that.
• 32:54
  Speaker D: I don't know.
• 32:54
  Speaker B: And it's just like, I saw that yesterday. It was on Facebook. Somebody posted it. And I thought, you know, that's our part, that's our context, that unfortunately, we, as production, agriculture, we have we were. I love Gabe Brown's quote. He says, don't try to outperform your environment.
• 33:10
  Speaker A: Oh, wow.
• 33:11
  Speaker B: And that is what we are. That's all we do. That's what irrigation is like. Irrigation in West Texas is we are trying to outperform our dry climate. And unfortunately, I think our generation is now seeing the negative effects of that. And, you know, one of my favorite.
• 33:30
  Speaker A: Quotes if you watch Ken Burns documentary on the Dust bowl is a farmer from up in the, you know, probably north of Amarillo. And he said, someday someone's gonna ask, why did you use all the water? This is not a long term solution for this region, you know, and so what do we do? Because people's, their livelihoods are built around a system that's not sustainable. And I mean, I know we're like, you know, your dad, we went out of farming because we had to, you know, and losing that way of life is really, it's really different from, I think, a lot of other businesses because it is so it's part of your soul.
• 34:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's who you are, man.
• 34:10
  Speaker A: It really, really is. You can recover, but it takes a lot to do it.
• 34:16
  Speaker D: That's a big reason we went into vineyards is the, is just like you say, you know, what's gonna work in our environment? What's gonna work with our resources? Because we can support three times the employees, and yet we're watering 10% of our acres. That's all we're gonna water. And so we're able to cut back our water usage drastically. And yet, if, and if my dad hadn't been on this track, I wouldn't be still farming. Because, you know, 2000 acre farm, it's not supporting enough. It's not going to pay enough of us to stain it. I'd be, I'd be somewhere else. And so because of the way he's moved into the vineyard industry and it's, you know, that's a whole nother, the whole nother discussion there. There's so much more work involved. There's still so much stuff going on there. But the margins are there and the.
• 35:09
  Speaker A: Economic impact on the state of Texas is unbelievable. Out of your 2000 acre farm, the impact across the entire state is phenomenal. So, Lacy, let's talk for a minute. Jeremy mentioned, you know, certifications. Let's talk a minute about, you know, what you're doing with Madewell.
• 35:32
  Speaker C: I feel like I'm certified out the wazoo.
• 35:34
  Speaker A: I know, right?
• 35:34
  Speaker C: I've got three different certifications on cattle, three or four on cotton. And I feel like all I do is fill out paperwork for people. Yes. It's starting to make a difference. I think one good thing that it does is it makes people really stop and look at what they're doing. And when you're in the moment of farming, you're doing what you've got to do, because one day could wipe you out, depending on the weather. So, you're constantly concerned about what you've got to do at this moment. And then when I'm doing the certification and stuff, and luckily, I'm middle aged, and I have. My nephew is 27, and my middle. My oldest daughter is 24, I think. Anyway, they both love spreadsheets, and so Molly tracks all of our water use. I mean, she's got spreadsheets out the water.
• 36:29
  Speaker A: Oh, and I'm telling you, I have seen the girls notebook.
• 36:31
  Speaker C: When it comes time for me to do certifications, it's like, send me your stuff.
• 36:35
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 36:35
  Speaker C: You know, I keep up with one end of it. Molly does the water. My nephew monitors the spraying. I would like to go back to one thing, Jeremy. I'm constantly passing one of his farms. You planted some of your multi species cover crop. I'm guessing August. I'm not good with time, but I just pay attention and watch it, and it's like, love it, because I bought this stuff to do that, and then was telling my husband about it, was really excited. He's like, we're gonna kill it when we spray the cotton, when we defoliate. And it's like, ugh.
• 37:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:09
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 37:10
  Speaker C: And so.
• 37:12
  Speaker A: But you're. That. I mean, the picture of your cotton.
• 37:16
  Speaker C: Open and all that cover and the cattle in it. I love it.
• 37:20
  Speaker A: It's amazing. Yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker B: Well, it's so fun because, like. And don't get me wrong. In 21, for some reason, we didn't get that rain in September. Okay. And I don't mind sharing this, and I don't say this to, like, look at me, but my cover crop bill is a $60,000 bill because that's my fertility. And in 21, I planted $60,000 worth of seed. Not one of it came up, and.
• 37:43
  Speaker A: It didn't come up.
• 37:44
  Speaker B: So. So there are failures in that. And that's where I recently gave a talk on Soil health institute, or soil health academy at High Plains Journal. And my focus of the talk was, you got to have a why for what you do in life. There's a great book by Simon Sinek called, you know, know your why. And the reason why I'm going there is because so many of my neighbors say, well, I tried that cover crop and it didn't work.
• 38:09
  Speaker C: They tried one year.
• 38:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, they tried it one year, or they tried of different species besides wheat, and, you know, they spent because, you know, it gets expensive when you add the legumes, but if you don't have a. Why? Like, no, I do this because I believe in it. It's my purpose, it's my goal. And so, you know, but, yeah, if we plant it, we always try to be planting, and that, that's a benefit to being organic. I can't defoliate my cotton.
• 38:32
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 38:33
  Speaker B: You know, and so, you know, this year we planted that in August, the one farm that Lacy's talking about, and in September I had ten inches of rain.
• 38:41
  Speaker C: It was gorgeous.
• 38:41
  Speaker B: I mean, it's just like, you know, and so it's so fun. I mean, it's so fun to be stripping or harvesting cotton and you got a big old radish hanging out through your module. But, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't affect my grades and, you know, and it's amazing. I get all, I get so geeked out and I enjoy it so much, but, but it goes back to timing, you know, and you've got to be ready to go and it's just, but it's faith, right? Because I'm throwing out a bunch of seed, hoping for a rain.
• 39:14
  Speaker C: And that's one thing that we don't. I mean, we plant cover crops and if it looks like it's going to rain because we don't water our cover crops, I'm not going to waste water on cover crops. I mean, yes, we planted in 21, we, 10,000 acres of COVID crops, and in September of the following year, we got some rain and they finally started coming up. Goodness, that made for some great grazing. But yes, you do have to have faith that, I mean, you do it because you believe in it. The amount of gas and time that you spend going out there, your cover crop seed, we put a lot of money into it.
• 39:49
  Speaker A: And so how do bankers feel about that?
• 39:52
  Speaker B: About what?
• 39:53
  Speaker A: Taking a risk on cover crops? 60,000. How do bankers feel about that? I mean, when you think about. That's another limiting factor for folks changing their practices.
• 40:01
  Speaker B: But, you know, like, you know, Kyle can probably relate to this, but as an organic farmer, that's, that's, I don't do compost. I don't do, I really don't do anything. So the COVID crops and the animals are my, my fertilizer bills. So if my neighbor's funding 200 grand in synthetic fertilizer. And I'm planning it the way God designed it. And, you know, when 70% of our air that we breathe is nitrogen and he's given us plants to capture that nitrogen in the soil. So, you know, it's not that big. And there's ways you can mitigate that. We're trying to grow a lot of our own cover crop seed now to try to. To try to at least cut that in half.
• 40:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, so, yeah, that's a great idea.
• 40:41
  Speaker C: That's one of the things that we've done too, is we've quit buying so much synthetic fertilizer. Some of the stuff that we do buy is pressure from landowners that want that on their land. And what has been interesting is we've been able to show them on farms where we run cattle because we split all of our irrigated land in half. And so one half of a pivot sits out for an entire year with a multi species cover crop if it came up and stuff. And then we. That's kind of my way of. Kind of going the direction that these guys are, but still satisfying the 10,000 acres to get across. And I would like to do something else, but until things change a little bit, we're kind of the way we are. But it's like everybody says, it's a journey and you're kind of going. And it's interesting because we have four generations all farming at one time. The conversations that we get in and watching our neighbors do different things. Molly and I have really been advocating for 80 inch dry land. And then you and I were out at Kyle's and knew the year we had just plowed up or shredded, what, 6000 acres of dry land.
• 41:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker C: And to see his and how loaded it was, I came home and it's like, you gotta come see this. And so Dean is more on board of going that way. One of our partners, he looks at everything from an insurance point of view. And that drives me.
• 42:13
  Speaker A: That's hard.
• 42:14
  Speaker C: Drives me insane. And so family meetings are always somewhat interesting.
• 42:21
  Speaker B: But you raise a great point, though, like, you know, the 80 inch cotton has been or the wider or whatever that spacing is. But if you go back when we talk about the wisdom of the ages, yes, they all grew a lot of cotton. Two in one.
• 42:34
  Speaker A: They did.
• 42:34
  Speaker B: Or skip row.
• 42:35
  Speaker A: Skip row.
• 42:35
  Speaker B: Because they knew, you know, and the Bible tells us this. The Bible has every wisdom that we have. The Bible says there's two things that are never satisfied the eyes of a man. We won't go there. But the land is never satisfied with enough rain. And then when you look at our average rainfalls, you know, 18 inches on average on a good year. On a good year. And then you look at when that 18 inches actually comes growing a winter crop really doesn't make sense for us because that's our driest months of the year. But we got away from all that because of programs.
• 43:07
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 43:08
  Speaker B: Whether it was a government program or an insurance program. And I get it. I totally get it. It's a financial, you know, it's been what sustained us through some of these years. But it does work and it's fun. I love the wide row.
• 43:23
  Speaker A: Well we drove past some skip row, oh my goodness, probably two years ago or something. We were out towards Meadow and Doug said wait a minute, backed up. He's like that is skip row cotton. That has got to be Cliff Bingham.
• 43:37
  Speaker B: Scott.
• 43:39
  Speaker A: You hadn't seen it in years and years. Yeah, yeah.
• 43:43
  Speaker D: We tried a couple different things last year and I think the principle just came down to limiting your plant count to what you could finish out successfully.
• 43:53
  Speaker C: But that's one of the things that excites me about that is you look at how much we all spend in seed, you guys.
• 43:58
  Speaker A: I don't know what organic seed costs.
• 44:00
  Speaker C: But I know what I, what I pay in seed. I am excited about two plants.
• 44:05
  Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
• 44:06
  Speaker C: The cost savings, just the cost savings on 6000 acres of dry land is going to be phenomenal. And just trying to get that through. I don't know. One of the things I love visiting with both of you about is you have the numbers and it's not for everybody. But for me as a business person that's what it comes down to is we, yes, we love what we do. It's incredibly frustrating and incredibly rewarding at the same time. But it's still a business. We still have to be able to turn a profit in order to stay in business and to have that to pass down to the future generations. And so that's right. That's conversations like this is I can watch what you're both doing and still feel like I can. We can make some small shifts to be able to head in a direction to where hopefully it'll be easier for my kids to do because we're already kind of setting some of that groundwork.
• 45:01
  Speaker A: Well and now, you know, some. There's so much money out there now for folks that want to put in cover crops and they don't have the money. There's so much climate smart money out there. I know in Lubbock, you can contact grain sorghum growers. They have a, they've got a huge grant for some of those things that.
• 45:20
  Speaker C: If you've already been doing some of the stuff, like we've kind of all been doing a lot of.
• 45:25
  Speaker A: Where's the reward?
• 45:26
  Speaker C: Well, you're exempt from it because you're not just now taking class and stuff. But I think the three of us kind of look at it as different. It's what we're going to do regardless of whether we're getting any financial benefits.
• 45:40
  Speaker A: But there's no, there's so much money there, there's no excuse now to not try some of these things. You know, that's true. If that there's no economic excuse, maybe.
• 45:48
  Speaker C: Some people say try to come up, right.
• 45:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. And not to say that people are, you know, trying to make excuses. I think everyone is, for the most part, legitimately looking at their, you know, bottom line and trying to make it work. I just hope that people can, you know, learn less a lesson for me and, and don't, you know, dig in your heels so much, you know, and be willing to think that maybe the way that we have been doing it the last several years is not the only way to do it.
• 46:24
  Speaker C: One of the things that really drove it home to our employees and our family is this past year we took on one of our neighbors retired, and we took on just under 3000 acres of his land. And he had been, he had tractors that we bought that were four years younger than ours, but had almost two times the hours because he plowed non stuff. And he also had a brand new sprayer that he would spray at the beginning and the end anyway, just kind of different ways of farming. But we spent more money on his acres trying to build back into what we've been doing that it really showed our employees and some of the naysayers in our family, you know, what we have done has truly been beneficial and has saved us money in the long run. But from day to day, you don't always see it until you take on something else. And it's like, this is horrible. But anyway, for me, that was just one of those big yay. Moments of, yes, we've really made a difference in how we, we've come along and what we've done.
• 47:31
  Speaker A: So I want to read you a quote that I found several years ago. There's a really interesting book that we picked up at a garage sale, and it is a collection of news stories about agriculture, about lubbock.
• 47:45
  Speaker B: Oh, wow.
• 47:46
  Speaker A: And my favorite quote was by Richard Mason. He wrote, through a troublesome combination of necessity and inclination, the farmer who evolved on the plains developed a healthy propensity for innovation. He learned to accept change, or he failed. He extolled the doctrine of unending progress and as a matter of practicality, kept one eye on his neighbor's crop and cultivation practices and adapted those which proved promising.
• 48:13
  Speaker B: That's cool.
• 48:14
  Speaker A: Isn't that a great quote? That is great. You know, and I think a lot about just the fabulous things about our culture and. But, you know, for every, every strength, we have a coordinating weakness and that grit, the coordinating weakness, that can be that, you know, stubbornness.
• 48:29
  Speaker C: Stubbornness. Stubborn.
• 48:31
  Speaker A: We can be stubborn and unchanging. And, you know, I appreciate you guys being willing to spend time and open up your practices and, you know, make yourself vulnerable when you talk about these things. And I appreciate your willingness to do that. And to be vulnerable and being willing to, you know, that's a sacrifice that you're making for our culture. And we value it. We really do.
• 48:57
  Speaker B: Your quote made me think of another quote that is in Gabe Brown's book dirt of soil, and it's by a guy named Don Campbell. And I think about this a lot. He says, he says, if you want to make small, if you want to make small changes, change the things that you do. Like, for instance, like, if you want to lose weight, change the way you eat, but if you want to make major changes, you change the way you see things. And I think that that is so crucial. Like, in every, every area of our lives, you know, but in production agriculture, until I have a lot of neighbors that, you know, I wonder why they don't change. Like, for instance, like, I'll see, like, little things. Like, you'll hear, you know, the hot topic. For a while, there was no till, and but a lot of those guys were still doing the same things that they were doing before they became no till. They're just now not planet. They're just spraying twice as much. You know, I would think all three of us probably have a different way of seeing production agriculture now. Like, we see the land differently. For me, it's, for me, it's my faith. I see it as God's creation, and therefore, I'm a steward of that. And so whatever that looks like. But I think that goes along with what your quote is. You know, like, I think sometimes we just got to look at things from a different perspective, and that's really where change comes from.
• 50:15
  Speaker A: And that's one thing, you know, when he's talking about us here, he's talking about our ancestors, you know, and it is that same thing going back again, looking at the way it's been done before and not thinking too much of ourselves, that we've solved some problems when maybe we've created as many as we've solved.
• 50:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:34
  Speaker C: One of the things that I learned from my dad is I've laughed because my family came over to the US from Ireland. I went to Ireland to see some family and I look at it, and it's the greenest, most lush, beautiful place I think I've ever seen in my life. And I asked him, why on earth did you guys leave essentially the Garden of Eden? And then as you came, you stopped in a desert. I mean, literally, where our ranch is, it's like it has beauty to me, but you look at it, it's like you left the greenest, most lush area, and my dad said nobody was going to run us out of that area. And you stop and you think of history. Nobody liked the Irish at that time when they were coming over and stuff anyway. But, you know, we've thrived. We've had that land since 1848. We still run it and stuff, and I think it goes to that hardiness. And then also, you have to love something in order to keep it and to be able to stay in business for that long. And no, it hasn't always been easy, but my dad had a really common sense and I think it's the same for everybody. You look at things and you understand, yeah, why are we doing this now? In the cattle industry, people calving in January. It's like, why? Why would you calve in January?
• 51:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:58
  Speaker C: For us is the stripper balers came into practice that allowed me to completely change the way that I ranch because I wasn't here having to run a module builder and stuff. So technology has been an incredible blessing and at the same time, making those conscious decisions of how you're going to utilize technology to improve other aspects of how you farm and ranch and stuff. Anyway, tons of conversation to go to different times into all of that. But thank you so much, all for coming.
• 52:28
  Speaker A: Thank you.
• 52:30
  Speaker C: You guys are both somebody that I enjoy watching and I have a lot of respect for both of you and how you farm and just in who you guys are. And I appreciate the opportunity to consider myself a friend.
• 52:44
  Speaker D: Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks for having us.
• 52:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, thanks again for joining us and thanks to these pioneers for being here with us today and the books and different things that we've mentioned. We will link those things in the show notes, and we look forward to visiting with you again on the next episode of conservation stories.