Latest / The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast / Episode 42 | Illinois Regenerative Ag Initiative
Transcript
- Episode 42 | Illinois Regenerative Ag Initiative 00:00:04:21 - 00:00:36:19 Todd Gleason This is the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast, episode 42. The Illinois Regenerative AG Initiative I'm University of Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason. Our guests today include weed scientists and University of Illinois crop Sciences department head Adam Davis, and professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois and director of the Illinois Regenerative AG Initiative, Emily Heaton. She's also the University of Illinois Extension biomass crop specialist, with a focus on the agronomy of perennial crops, products and energy. 00:00:36:22 - 00:00:42:25 Todd Gleason Heaton started our discussion by explaining the Illinois Regenerative AG Initiative. 00:00:42:27 - 00:01:06:03 Emily Heaton It is a new initiative at the university that spans, multiple departments within the College of Aces, but is led out of the Department of Crop Sciences, and it focuses on developing, our capacity at the institution for doing regenerative ag based work in partnership with our local stakeholders. 00:01:06:05 - 00:01:13:13 Todd Gleason And Adam Davis joins us as well. Today. He is the department head for crop sciences. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, please? 00:01:13:15 - 00:01:31:18 Adam Davis Sure. I'm in my fourth year as head and in my work. I help guide the mission of the department and link our research, education, and extension activities with, just kind of the day to day administrative affairs of the department. 00:01:31:20 - 00:01:47:23 Todd Gleason So there should be interest. And I want to know from you as a department head what the difference between sustainable agriculture is and regenerative agriculture. Are they the same? And then we're going to find out whether the director of the regenerative has a different definition than you know. 00:01:47:26 - 00:01:57:14 Adam Davis Well, they're the same in that they're both buzzwords. Sustainable agriculture is a buzzword that's been used since the early 1970s. 00:01:57:17 - 00:02:27:19 Adam Davis Regenerative AG it's only been used for the last 3 or 4 years. But I think operationally there's a big difference. So sustainable agriculture, there's two big differences. One is that it's very much practice defined. What are okay practices, what are not okay practices, what's sustainable, what's not sustainable. And the word sustainable kind of reads this image in my mind of a fairly static and point. 00:02:27:22 - 00:03:11:20 Adam Davis Regenerative agriculture, in contrast, is an outcome based approach to sustainability in agriculture, in which you're trying to measure things that help improve various aspects of agriculture. So it's not practice based, it's outcome based. You're measuring improvements in soil quality, biodiversity, resilience, equitable careers or livelihoods in agriculture. And I believe that it allows us to pitch a very large tent to help people all the way along the continuum, from very conventional to organic, to begin working towards improving their ag systems along these metrics. 00:03:11:23 - 00:03:18:17 Todd Gleason Emily, it is your job to put this into practice and place. What is your definition? 00:03:18:19 - 00:03:40:12 Emily Heaton Well, not surprisingly, my definition is quite similar to Adams. I think generally it's anything regenerative. Agriculture is anything that helps regenerate the human and natural resources on which society depends. And I distinguish it from sustainability. The same way Adam does in terms of practices and outcomes. 00:03:40:12 - 00:03:58:19 Emily Heaton But I also think about it. Well, to be frank, I think about it in profitability terms. You know, if you put a dollar in the bank, do you want to sustain that dollar or do you want to grow it? And how do you know how much you grew it? You know, are you making 1% return or are you making 20% return? 00:03:58:21 - 00:04:10:00 Emily Heaton Those those metrics of return on investment are key to how we approach regenerative agriculture. How do what do we measure and how do we know, what we've achieved? 00:04:10:02 - 00:04:21:13 Todd Gleason Why is it that the college, the department is interested in regenerative agriculture as defined, and what purpose and role should it play? 00:04:21:16 - 00:04:30:06 Adam Davis Yeah, we're interested in supporting regenerative agriculture because it's outcomes are aligned with addressing the grand challenges of our time. 00:04:30:08 - 00:05:08:15 Adam Davis So global change, food security, a clean, safe, healthy environment, renewable energy, sustainable livelihoods. And addressing these challenges with regenerative agriculture also helps us, improve the productive capacity of the land at the same time that we're helping use AG as a management lever to address these grand challenges. My own journey towards regenerative agriculture began in 2012, when, we published an article that was the result of work that I had started as a graduate student at Iowa State with Matt Lieberman. 00:05:08:17 - 00:05:34:17 Adam Davis I called the Marsden Farm Study, and one of the findings of that study is that it's possible to balance productivity, profitability and environmental health in a field crop system. And when that article came out, all sorts of NGOs in Illinois came out of the woodwork and approached me and said, hey, let's do something together. And we've been building for ten years towards this. 00:05:34:19 - 00:05:53:26 Adam Davis Regenerate Illinois began in 2016. That's an organization that helps align the NGOs in Illinois. The Idea Farm Network was established in 2017, and when I became head, I was very interested in helping make this happen, where, University of Illinois began to show up for these stakeholders. 00:05:53:28 - 00:05:59:18 Todd Gleason So you're supported, Emily, by the department, by the college, but you're the director. 00:05:59:21 - 00:06:05:07 Todd Gleason What kind of initiatives are underway and what projects under those initiatives? 00:06:05:10 - 00:06:25:25 Emily Heaton Right. Well, first, let me just say that, the funding for the regenerative ag initiative at this time comes primarily from, fresh taste, which is an organization based in Chicago but represents, foundations from around the state and the region who want to see the same kind of, improved outcomes that Adam mentioned earlier. 00:06:25:28 - 00:07:00:25 Emily Heaton And what they recognized is that, one of the best resources that the University of Illinois has to, work with is is, of course, our students and our our faculty and staff. That's the resource that makes us special. And so we thought about what we could do to harness and leverage that resource. And we've come up with, seed grants that we make available on an annual basis to, any faculty and staff from the university who partners with a local stakeholder to do something related to regenerative AG that has an impact. 00:07:00:27 - 00:07:31:22 Emily Heaton So this is our first year of funding grant, and we just announced them, this fall. And so we have once again, they all have a university partner and a stakeholder partner. Two of those projects are related to a new potential crop, in the Midwest: chestnuts. So that's part of an agroforestry, approach to diversifying corn and soy systems that's also amenable to diversify cropping systems beyond corn, soy, including corn, soy, and also including animal agriculture. 00:07:31:22 - 00:07:53:17 Emily Heaton So you can do a lot of different things with agroforestry setups. And then we have one that's, that's based on small grains and the way we farm them and what it means for our health. And that one's connected, in part with, with faculty and staff from the university's Kyle College of Medicine, as well as with local stakeholders. 00:07:53:19 - 00:08:22:13 Emily Heaton So broadly, I would say the portfolio in this first year push the scientific boundaries. We have questions around robotics, around plant genetics, around microbiomes, but it also really starts to create, stakeholder university partnerships that are small right now but growing and have space to grow and have resources to grow. And we expect them to, leverage into new projects in the future. 00:08:22:15 - 00:08:44:03 Todd Gleason The stakeholder that probably will ask questions of both of you about this more often than not are conventional farmers that raise in a corn soy rotation. What do you tell them about the projects you're currently doing and the projects you hope to do that might be a direct outcome for them? 00:08:44:05 - 00:08:56:16 Emily Heaton I'd say we expect any producer, whether they're corn and soy or anything else, to think about their operation critically and what new things I'd like to, adopt and address. 00:08:56:16 - 00:09:12:10 Emily Heaton And if they find something that works for them in our portfolio. Great. I think they will, if they are open minded and think critically about the opportunities that are available to them in a changing ag marketplace and in a changing climate. 00:09:12:10 - 00:09:24:19 Adam Davis Frankly, I'd say be curious. Start small. Pay attention to how things turn out with your small experiments on your farm and then repeat. 00:09:24:21 - 00:09:27:19 Todd Gleason What other advice might you have for producers? 00:09:27:21 - 00:09:52:11 Emily Heaton I think the questions, the answer to the question is always the same how does it make money? So there are lots of ways that farmers can look at their operation and figure out how it can make more money. And what we do in the regenerative ag initiative, and frankly, within the crop sciences department, as we we think holistically about sources of income and sources of loss and how you balance those, and particularly for land owners. 00:09:52:14 - 00:10:17:00 Emily Heaton We've found that bringing in some of these regenerative practices, changing tillage, changing cover crops, changing diversity on the farm, usually, and leads to improved economic outcomes. And that's also reflected in fbf, data as well. But it's not easy. Figuring out how to do it is not easy. One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten is at least never make the same mistake twice. 00:10:17:02 - 00:10:25:28 Emily Heaton So, you know, there's going to be mistakes made every year, and we need, support for farmers along the way as they are being curious and as they are trying new things. 00:10:26:01 - 00:10:48:06 Adam Davis I would say get very serious about diversifying your cropping system, and I'll approach that as a weed scientist. From the perspective of herbicide resistance evolution, we have dug ourselves into a tremendous hole with the two crop summer annual only rotation. 00:10:48:08 - 00:11:16:06 Adam Davis It's getting worse. Dicamba tolerant soybeans were not the magic bullet. We've got resistance now, and in order to prepare for the future, you're going to have to grow something other. In addition to summer annuals on your farm. That's going to mean learning how to grow them. We need a supply chain that can handle them. We need markets and consumers that are interested in using them. 00:11:16:08 - 00:11:41:01 Adam Davis But that's why our scope at Regenerative AG Initiative in Illinois is not just on production, it's the Whole Foods system. Because in order to enable cropping system diversification, we've got to think up and down the supply chain. So when I speak with conventional growers, I began the conversation with herbicide resistance, because that's a critical failure point of the lack of diversity. 00:11:41:01 - 00:12:04:19 Adam Davis But you could also think about it with respect to resilience to climate change. A more diversified crop portfolio will allow you to survive those swings. If you think about, you know, if you have an investment portfolio for retirement, you're not going to retire on a single stock. And the same thing in a healthy cropping system that's going to be able to survive the swings of environment and global change. 00:12:04:25 - 00:12:09:19 Adam Davis You're going to have to think about actually making a resilient crop rotation. 00:12:09:21 - 00:12:33:08 Todd Gleason Adam Davis is the crop sciences department head for ACES, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. Emily Heaton is director of the Illinois Regenerative AG Initiative with the college and a professor of crop sciences. The two joined us on episode number 42 of the Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast. 00:12:33:11 - 00:12:43:15 Todd Gleason This program was produced in conjunction with Illinois Extension Watershed Outreach Associates, Jennifer Jones and Rachel Curry. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.