Latest / The Source – The Jorgensen Land & Cattle Podcast / The Source — Field Notes: Why Living Roots & Diversity Matter (Part 2)
Transcript
- speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: Over a hundred years of experience lie in Ideal South Dakota. The team at Jorgensen Lan and 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 back to Field Notes again joined by mister Brian Jorgensen. How many years, Brian? speaker-0: ⁓ man, ⁓ you're dating me now, Jenny. So I guess I've actively been farming since about nineteen eighty-five. So basically going into my forty-first year. ⁓ I graduated from South Dakota State in eighty-seven, got married in eighty-nine, but I've been actively farming ⁓ for forty almost forty-one years. So speaker-1: I know. Yeah. A wealth of experience and knowledge in everything that we do. speaker-0: Lots of lots of experience, you know, lots of mistakes, lots of successes I'd say, but ⁓ I think we've done a really good job of of setting our system up for the next generation. I really believe that. speaker-1: So what we've been doing through this series of field notes is starting to develop the idea of how soil health comes to be and is managed. And we've been through the first two principles of Brian Jorgensen's soil health model being soil armor and low disturbance. Coming into the third principle, Brian, in your ideal farming system, and that wasn't intended to be a pun, in your ideal farming system, how many months a year would you be able to get a living root on your farming? speaker-0: ⁓ man, you know, it's it's obviously tough ⁓ since we're not growing perennial crops. ⁓ if we can get nine months, time to ten months, we're we're doing a really, really good job. You know, obviously, ⁓ well first of all I wanna state that the five principles of soil health weren't in my inception. They they've been ⁓ approved practicas practicas practices among the soil health community for a number of years, probably the last eight to ten years they've kind of adopted. And they really truly are, you know, basic fundamental principles to attain that soil health. But back to your question, you know, ⁓ the native prairie system, Jamie, is a living biological root. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: community of microbes and fungi and everything for three hundred and sixty five days. Yep. And we know by observing that the power of that is is huge. So if we can develop a cropping system where we can maintain a living root for as long as possible, that's really the that's really the success. ⁓ it's really difficult to do that for twelve months of the year. It's really tough. speaker-1: So the third principle we're we're talking about, if you guys haven't caught on yet, maintaining a living route. Tell me what that and I we teed it up a little bit, obviously talking about native prairie systems, but tell me what it means to you when you hear or make say the terms maintaining a living root. Right. speaker-0: So if if as we've talked about in previous segments, the plant and the soil have a relationship and they have a bartering system. The plant is really ⁓ a sugar machine. It's its job in life is to gather sunlight energy and and go through the most efficient process known to man called photosynthesis, and it creates from sunlight CO2 and water. Carbohydrates, sugars, those kinds of things that it trades, pumps down into its roots, and the roots exudate those materials and trade those with the microbes in the biological system on the roots and around the roots for nutrients that the plant needs. They actually send chemical signals telling the microbes what exactly they need. It's an extremely intricate system, but that living root is constantly changing. Constantly transferring and exchanging nutrients and constantly providing a habitat for the biological community. It's not just there to stabilize the plant. It's not just there to suck up moisture. It's not just there to suck up nutrients. That's not how it works. It's creating an environment to explore the soil around that plant for as big as that root can get. to create an environment to trade and barter sugars and carbohydrates for nutrients and to create a habitat for those microbes. That's its job. The longer we can maintain that system in the soil, the livelier and healthier that soil's gonna become. speaker-1: So really you would consider the living room the engine. If organic matter is the fuel tank, living route would be the engine that that continues to fire that system. speaker-0: Correct. It's the one that's the trading mechanism. That's the plant's ability to trade those carbohydrates and carbons into the soil. So the bigger that route, the bigger the engine, right? It's a good way to look at it. speaker-1: So when we start talking about maintaining a living route in a in a farming system, I think this probably ties back quite nicely. Obviously, as we've done in the first two segments, everything ties together. Probably ties back nicely to the very disciplined rotation management in your systems. So why don't go ahead and take me there? Yep. And and let's dive into that side of of how we're going to maintain this living root in these systems. speaker-0: Well, for the purpose of comparison, we've already kind of talked about a native prairie. It's continual, it's perennial, it never stops. And as long as we manage that system correctly, it's going to function correctly. So that's that's the goal, that's the benchmark that we all should try and work towards. Conversely, if you look at in today's culture, we have corn soybean model, which is predominant in the Midwest. That root system is alive from basically May until September. And that's it. From that point forward, we have no living root, no living exchange, nothing's happening in that soil for ostensibly half the year. That to me is problematic because you're not building organic matter, you're actually reducing organic matter. you're actually reducing the amount of ⁓ colonized environment for microbes and fungi. You're reducing that. You're continually working that down. So in our rotation, and I can walk you through basically we we start with that winter wheat, where we have winter wheat that goes into the ground in the fall, say September, develops a root system in September. And we'll maintain that root system actively until about June of the following year, late June, early July. Okay, so you've got about eight to nine months right there that you've got an active system. After harvest, we've got nothing. As soon as harvest activity is done, we're planting a cover crop. That cover crop's gonna be about three to four weeks developing an emergence and root system, and it's gonna carry through until dormancy, maybe November. So with the exception of one or two months in that cycle, we've got a living root. Okay. And so that's the best model that we can get to, aside from a alfalfa and a grass, perennial grass situation. That's really the best model we can have. Corn silage, for example, will get started in May. We'll get a root system, we'll harvest. Course, it's no roots, ⁓ living roots in October. We'll immediately plant a cover, hopefully get some moisture to bring that up. We're gonna have a couple months there. So we went from a six month maybe to an eight or nine month again. Not too bad. So those are examples of within our rotation, we try and do things to create a bigger window of opportunity to put that root in that system. speaker-1: And so we've talked about soil armor previously. Aside from the soil armor that we're gaining because of living root, obviously then hopefully has a plant growing on the surface adding soil armor. What is our what is the other benefits we can tie to that root being in the ground? Sure. During that time period. speaker-0: Well, the root becomes a natural stabilizer of the soil. So when you get even even if the root is dead and the plant no longer is living and functioning, that root before it it takes about a year in most cases for that root to completely decompose. But all the while that root is in that soil, it's creating a stabilizing effect. It's holding that soil in place from erosion. Especially on slopes. And so hopefully there's cover from the degrading plant above the root to create enough armor to protect that soil surface. But subsoil, it's creating a a stabilizing effect. It's also creating a place for microbes to colonize. And they're going to be there all winter. They're going to sporalize and they're going to stay in and around that root biome, if you will, as long as that root is there. And as that root slowly degrades, then the capacity to to maintain the biological activity starts to diminish as as well. So the quicker we can get another root in that system, the better off we are. speaker-1: So once we lose that root and as we lose that root, what are some of the negative things we're gonna see aside from obviously a decrease in microbial activity? ⁓ what are some other negative things we're gonna see there, Brian? What are what are we truly losing as that root system leaves? speaker-0: As that root system deteriorates, which it naturally does, ⁓ unless it's a a perennial plant, it's continually building and rebuilding and ⁓ on an annual plant though it's going to grow and die. Once it dies, the community of that it creates for the microbes around it also dies. And so the microbes are left without a way of gathering. carbohydrates and carbon. They have to rely on what's around them, that's organic matter. So they're gonna start feeding on things that aren't there, right? Or are are not the root, but they're gonna start feeding on organic matter. So without that root, you have no community for those microbes to survive on. So they're gonna have to start eating away at their at the residues and the organic matter levels. All those things are gonna be affected by not having a root. Secondarily, you've lost the soil stabilizer. So the soil aggregate begins to break down because the community of microbes goes away. And so you start seeing ⁓ the ability for that soil to take in air and water start to diminish because the root isn't there. So a lot of things start to break down and fall apart without that living root. speaker-1: Right. So we our goal is to maintain a living root to the best of our ability. And we've teed up what that route is really doing in the system. So lead me and then we've talked a little bit about it with cropping rotations. What are some of the management realities to maintaining a living root? speaker-0: Timing. Timing's the big thing, you know, in a to give you an example, the like we used with the winter wheat, it creates once harvest is done on winter wheat, it creates a window of opportunity to place a l another living plant out there. And by the way, those kinds of opportunities lend themselves to diversity again too. You can put lots of different species of a cover crop, not just one kind of a crop, but multiple species. And multiple species create multiple opportunities for multiple different kinds of microbes. In a corn soybean rotation, once you have harvest, you have a very short window of opportunity to create a cover crop. So that's why I say rotations like that are detrimental because it's really hard to create without the cereal grain. in the equation it's really hard to create a window of opportunity to lengthen out or place a cover crop to lengthen out that that period of time that there's a living red. speaker-1: So we talked compaction a fair amount in our last conversation on disturbance. Root is playing a factor in that. speaker-0: Absolutely. The roots are gonna help break up compaction. You know, there's all kinds of different species of plants and there's with that there's all kinds of different styles and types of roots. You have fibrous roots and the grasses that many, many thousands and thousands of fibrous root hairs that are created and they go down deep. speaker-1: Vig amount. speaker-0: Some plants like bracas brassicas, you have one big taproot that has fibrous roots coming off of it. But that big taproot is thick and heavy and it has the ability to bust through levels of compacted layers of soil through time and break all that up. So irregardless of the root, it has the ability to break up soil compaction. As long as it's not in excess. Roots tend not to like to go through soil com that are compacted beyond three hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds per square year. speaker-1: As we're talking and you mentioned different crops having different root systems, does that play into your rotation at all in getting getting a crop in that's depth into the soil versus say a brasset with a shorter, thicker root? Does any of that play, Brian, or am I way off base? speaker-0: No, it does to some extent. You know, a corn root's different than a wheat root is different than a an oats root or a soybean root, alfalfa root. I think the biggest thing is creating the opportunity, Jamie, to put in a multi-species cover crop where you have many different shapes and sizes of roots and many different sh you know, kinds of of of roots that harbor different species of microbes. And that's really the biggest thing is for us is trying to create that window of opportunity. It's really difficult to do when you have a tight rotation like corn soybean, for example. But where you have multiple multiple crops, where we have oats and spring wheat and winter wheat and corn and millet and all of these different crops, they're different windows of planting and they're different windows of harvest, and they create different windows of opportunity to to keep it extended out into a cover crop season. speaker-1: So some people may say or see the idea of a cover crop as a cost. Obviously for us with the grazing that we do, we don't view it as a cost. ⁓ actually it's a an economic return for us with that cover crop. Right. But would you play into a little bit? The conversation behind the cover crop and kind of tie back to the previous two conversations that we've had with soil armor and disturbance to now maintaining a living root in that soil system, and then a principle down the road that's gonna play. Right. ⁓ just talk speak to that a little bit. If I was to say, I don't wanna plant a cover crop because then I've got to get it off. to plan again yeah the cost behind it. Right. speaker-0: In our system, the cover crop is an enormous benefit not only for the soil, but it also provides us a grazing opportunity. But for those guys that don't have a way to to utilize that, it can still be an advantage to them just by way of creating organic matter and extending out that root period. is it going to truly offset every penny of what it costs to put that crop in. I would say in most cases it could, but it may not, just depending on the how much cost they associate with that. The best way for us to recapture that value is obviously to put cattle on it and graze it. But I think the benefits of having if you look at armor, soil armor, and you look at the disturbance, if you look at all the things that we've previously talked about. Maintaining that living root for as long as you possibly can, as effectively as you can, is going to bring payoffs that you may not recognize until years down the road. But they will be recognized. It's just hard to make that payoff that that same year unless you're grazing it. I don't always put a cover crop behind every wheat field. It just depends. If we have a situation when we harvest wheat and we have tons of subsoil moisture, I will plant a cover crop. I will I will always plant a cover crop regardless of soil moisture behind a winter wheat crop, if I know we have the capacity to graze it. There's water and there's fences. But if I don't have that capacity and it's dry, I probably won't plant that cover crop because most likely it's probably not going to succeed. In our system, we get about three out of five years where we get a really successful cover crop. When I talk about successful cover crop, that means one that emerges and sets roots and grows vegetation enough where we can maintain soil armor. maintain cover and provide a grazing opportunity. That doesn't always happen here. The more easterly we go into our geography, the more likely we are to grow that cover and return on its on your investment. speaker-1: And you you mentioned earlier, ⁓ as long as we don't remove all the fodder and tear that ground again, even that dead root will still provide a little bit of benefit in those years where we can't get back to it with a cover crop. Yep. But that also plays into your rotation of how soon you're getting the next crop into that ground. Yeah. Behind that. speaker-0: That's correct. speaker-1: that cover and those those kinds of speaker-0: Precisely. And I you know, and I think we'll we'll kind of segue into our next segment, which will talk about diversity. But ⁓ in a in a really good healthy system, you've got lots of different root systems out there, different species, because they create different environments and do different send different signals to the microbes. And so I think to me that's a nice segue into that next segment about diversity. And ⁓ but from a from a ecological and an economical standpoint, the root systems, whether they're alive or dead, create a benefit as long as they're left undisturbed. And the key take home I would say is let's make sure we have a living root doing its thing for as long as we possibly can. And we just need to start speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: thinking about two crops like corn soybeans, I don't have time or don't have an opportunity to grow a cover crop. Think of ways you can change that rotation to create the opportunity without being, you know, economically unstable. ⁓ and I think that will pay big dividends. speaker-1: Is there anything we're doing that we're not thinking about that stresses root life and shortens root life? speaker-0: ⁓ sure. So roots are impacted by compaction. They're can they're impacted by the herbicides that we use. ⁓ there are many root restricting herbicides out there that are being used for various crops that will prevent other roots from coming into play. So again, this goes back to planning, Jamie. We have to when we're sitting down creating our crop plan, not only do we look at the crop, but we look at how that crop is managed from a herbicide or fertility perspective, because it will impact sometimes in some most cases negatively what we want to try and do after that crop is off. ⁓ so we need to be very aware there's many, many things that create problems for that root. And most often it's more herbicides than it is anything that create the issue. Compaction, you know, some roots will bust through most of that. But I'm telling you, if there's the wrong herbicide that's ⁓ that's out there in persistent herbicides, it's gonna it's gonna cause real problems. Okay. speaker-1: We've talked a lot about how keeping a living root in the system provides efficiencies, the economic impact. One thing that I maybe want you to go ahead and touch on is what does idle soil cost compared to that soil having a healthy system in it that's biologically active. speaker-0: Well, it's it's again, it's it's really hard to put dollars and cents to that. speaker-1: You're you're not gonna put a dollar amount on it, but we know the impact. speaker-0: I can tell you that if soil lacks biological activity or it's minimized, the efficiency of nutrient transfer in that system is vastly diminished. And soil, at that point, the soil becomes more like dirt and it becomes a medium in which we throw a plant and throw nutrients at it and make it grow. In any case, there still has to be biological activity in that process. If you don't have armor, if you have massive disturbance, and if you have no roots, you've created a desert. Okay? Or the beginnings of a desert. Right. And so all of that can be healed by bringing those things step by step back into play. But it's again, it's very hard to say, okay, well, it's going to cost you X amount. But just looking at the normal practices that we empower today in terms of how much fertility we're putting out there, how much tillage we're doing, we're costing ourselves hundreds of dollars per acre. Not tens, hundreds of dollars per acre. In today's world, that's a lot. That's a that to me, that is the difference between multi generational success or not. speaker-1: If we're gonna again, we kinda sum a lot of these up with what am I gonna look for? So your two main tools, spade and a probe. Yeah. And I wanna I wanna know what my root system looks like today and what it's gonna look like when I know I'm I'm making progress on maintaining a healthy root system. What differences am I gonna be able to visually see, Brian? speaker-0: Again, when you take that spade out there, if you're doing it during a living crop, you're gonna hopefully see robust roots that go down as deep as the spade. Right. If you see roots that go down three or four inches and then flatten out, then you've got a compaction issue. But if you go down and you dig up those healthy roots and you smell it and it smells rich and it smells earthy. And the and the and the roots are w nice and bright and white and they're fibrous and they're full. And if you give that plant a good shake and all the dirt, soil comes falling off, that's what I look for. If the soil is stuck to those roots and compacted, that's an issue. Then we need to probably deal with that somehow or some fashion. Versus going into in the off season. When there's no living plant, I still wanna see that root structure down there. I still want to see it holding that soil area together. Very much the same as I would see it in the in the during the growing season. So you're gonna see that visually. If you take your prod and go out and poke through it, as long as there's some moisture in the system, you should be able to penetrate through all of that very, very nicely. speaker-1: And so so Those are the kind of changes we're gonna visually see. we know there's gonna be a soil test change because again, we've made the system healthier. If I was going to prioritize roots first in my decision making. Where and and we've obviously I I think I know where this is gonna land with how much emphasis we've put on rotation and cover. But what should my focus and emphasis be if I'm gonna make that that living route Past knowing we're gonna have good soil armor and knowing that low disturbance practices are gonna be used. First decision maker then becomes root, how does that look as I'm starting to make that three to five year plan? speaker-0: Implementing more crops, implementing cereals into the equation, implementing perennial grasses into the equation. Anything that anything that we can do to break that monoculture cycle. If you and again, I don't think we've mentioned this, but I I the native prairie is a great example, but in nature, nowhere in nature is there a single species growing on its own. There is just no such thing. There is also always a multiple set of things growing simultaneously. And so it's in in agriculture, it's hard to do that. But we have to figure out ways of making that happen sometime in the system, whether it's with a cover crop, whether it's double cropping, ⁓ whether it's co-mingling of crops. There's a whole latitude of things that you can do from a management perspective to broaden that horizon out. And it it really just takes nothing more than your imagination and trial and error to see what can work. But you've got to step out of that monoculture paradigm and try things that you normally wouldn't have tried before. speaker-1: And I I think that goes to a point to say that we think about traditional marketing systems. Mm-hmm. And I know we're not we're we're talking about soil health, but when when a person steps out into this and and we're gonna take this very serious with our soil health. It's not just outside of the box thinking there, but it's gonna challenge your thinking when it comes to your marketing plans. No question. Your feed resource needs. I I think worth mentioning here in this conversation, Brian, about a little bit of how you have been able to do that because I think people are gonna be going, Yeah. Well, how do I make sense out of that? speaker-0: Sure. Well, it's obvious that we have cattle in our system and that's our that's our driving economic force within ⁓ our partnership. But that also gives us the opportunity to grow a lot of things for those cattle. And so when you think about eighty five percent of our acreage is devoted to growing a feed source, not a grain source, but a feed source, that's a marketing opportunity, right? And so if you don't have cattle in your equation, then you need to figure out how you can couple yourselves or partner yourself with people who have livestock. Whether it's a grazing opportunity or growing a feedstuff or whatever the case is, if you can get and we'll talk about this as our final principle in in in coming segments, how important that is from a soil health perspective, but it's also important from an economic perspective as well. For us it's huge. Right. Absolutely paramount. speaker-1: You know, even the even the certified seed giving you the opportunity to grow that cereal and not just have a commodity to market. It's it's value adding it to make it make sense. Yes. You know, I I think everybody's gonna look at it and say, gosh, there's there's cost associated with that and and speaker-0: Value adding it. speaker-1: wheat's not worth anything or oats aren't worth anything. I I think it's worth mentioning here that there are ways that that we can value add these products absolutely to to make it more yes appealing plus the ROI you're getting in building on your soil health. speaker-0: Well, you bring up a good point in terms of it's not just the cattle. I mean, we everything that we grow here and especially with our newest initiative is to maybe convert some of the commercial grain sales that we've normally been doing into a grazing resource versus a grain resource. Obviously taking out the grains that we know we can value add through a certified seed process. But soybeans would be a good example. I like soybeans in my rotation because they offer me a good opportunity to grow spring wheat. But can we minimize those acres to a point and then take some of those excess acres and convert them to a grazing crop or a feed crop? And so by doing that, you value add. And by doing that, you also create more windows of opportunity. And you also in that process bring diversity to the table, which we're going to talk about in our next segment. speaker-1: So I I love your passion, Brian, because it gives me passion to want to talk to you about it. And everything we've talked about is is tying together. Go ahead and put a bow on what maintaining a living route means to you in this system. speaker-0: Right. To me it's it's ⁓ it's one really important com com piece in this whole puzzle. And all you have to do is walk into a native pasture and realize the importance of that living system and how dynamic and how resilient it is in a day when it's twenty below zero and that that plant and that species, those those grasses and forbs can all survive because they have a dynamic root system below ⁓ And that dynamic root system is supporting lots of life we can't see in the microbes and the fungi. And it's creating that soil structure that takes in water and air liberally. That is so incredibly important in building that soil resiliency and that soil health. And the longer that that living root is in place, the more dynamic that soil system becomes. The fewer roots we have. The more diminished it becomes. The more roots we have, the more robust it becomes. It's very simple. speaker-1: Thank you, folks. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Producer Boston. This has been principle number three, maintaining a living root. And we will see you guys next time. Welcome back, folks, to another episode of Field Notes. This is part four in the series on ⁓ soil health principles. ⁓ we've covered soil armor, we've covered keeping a living root. And we've covered minimal disturbance. That's correct. Brian, just quick synopsis of the first three of of just a little highlight of each one of those those first three principles as we move into part four here. speaker-0: So the soil armor thing obviously ⁓ it is what it says. We wanna we wanna keep cover on that soil. ⁓ it's like it's skin. And that that comes from decaying plants, it comes from feces of animals, it comes from dying insects, it comes from all things that are were once living and now are deceased. And they create a quilt, a quilt of armor on the on the top of that soil. And it's really important to maintain that as best as possible to keep the soil protected. Diversity is really, you know, it's not diversity, excuse me. Yep. Disturbance really can be anything. Disturbance can be tillage, it can be chemical like fert fertilizers, herbicides, it can be physical, it can be tillage, it can be biological, ⁓ by upsetting that that cart of biological materials. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Anything that changes the natural course of that soil and how it survives and how it lives is disturbance. And so when whatever we're doing in terms of management, we have to think about how we're affecting that system and how it's being impacted. And finally, what are we talking about? speaker-1: Maintaining maintaining the living roof. Yeah. ⁓ no, you're good. speaker-0: Sorry, I told you I was gonna be so maintaining the living root really is all about keeping alive root in that soil system for as long as we possibly can, because that really is the home for the biology. It's a stabilizer for the soil, and without it the soil begins to become a desert. speaker-1: Right. Yeah, and we've we've talked a lot about organic matter and and all the different parts and pieces that have led into to part four. And ⁓ Brian, go ahead and intro increasing your your diversity of the crops that you're using. speaker-0: So the diversity in the soil system, it's one of the closest things that I like to look at when you're when you talk about emulating the native prairie system. And if you think about how for many thousands of years that system, the native prairie system, has sustained itself, it's because primarily it's got a diverse set of plants. Cool and warm season grasses, cool and warm season broadleaves. And all of those species are intermingling at different times of the year. Some of them are helping each other, some of them are not. They're all providing a different ecosystem for the microbes in the soil. They're all providing a different ecosystem for the insects that that they may harbor. But they're continually rotating and they're continually creating a healthy environment in that soil. So when you think about a cropping system, it's a lot different because in most cropping systems we're dealing with a monoculture. Growing corn, for example, or soybeans, or a wheat crop, or an alfalfa crop. That's pretty what pretty much what we'd call a monoculture. Not saying that it's wrong. I'm just saying that it's ⁓ it's a piece of this. dynamic dynamic that I think is really, really important. If if you look in nature, there is no place in nature where there is a single species growing by itself. Right. In nature. And so that's what we're trying to talk about here. speaker-1: Yeah. So ⁓ when we talk about increasing crop species diversity, ⁓ probably a main point of a of a theme throughout this is discipline and a crop rotation. But why don't you go ahead and touch on the problems in maintaining even a a a two crop rotation of ⁓ say a corn soybean we've talked about that a lot very common in our part of the world ⁓ just just go through what problems we can create through a mon I I consider that a real monoculture type scenario. ⁓ what problems are we creating, Brian? speaker-0: So typically what you see happen over time in a monoculture system where you have basically similar type crops growing in rotation, and corn and soybeans would be a good example where they're they're both planted in the spring, they're both warm season, ⁓ they're harvested in the fall, and then we've got basically no activity for half the year. Very similar in nature in terms of when they're planted and when they're maturing. So ⁓ What happens in that system is that Mother Nature begins to figure that one out pretty quickly. And she will insert things in that system to break it apart. That could be insects, it could be diseases, it could be all kinds of things that would create inhibitions to that system. She wants that system to be more dynamic. And she's gonna put weed species in there, diseases throughout the disease cycles that inhibit the growth of that monoculture plant. So she's continually throwing softballs at it, curved balls, if you will. And so if you think about trying to change that by simply adding a cereal grain into that equation helps quite a bit because it it it brings a new dynamic to that system. If you add cover crops to that system, it breaks that apart and diversifies that whole system. And Mother Nature is more at ease with with that. It's hard to do. And in today's world, it's hard to do that. speaker-1: So so can we think about it a little bit like this, Brian? ⁓ in ruminant nutrition, we talk about all the different types of microbes that are in the rumen, and they're fed by different feed sources that we provide to the microbes within the rumen. Can we think about it in that same manner where different roots are providing different things to different microbes in the soil? speaker-0: Exactly. You can think of the soil system much like the rumen and that is a very diverse set of microbes. And those microbes are dependent on certain elements. And certain plant species give them some of those things. If those plant c species don't exist, then the microbes are likely not to exist as well either. So The bottom line is the more diverse that plant system is, the more diverse the biological community in the soil is gonna be, simply by way of being there. And so if we have a monoculture system, we have kind of a glass ceiling of microbes in our soil, a very non-diverse set of microbes. speaker-1: ⁓ so when you when you think about that that system, for for the most part, we're still going to be planting one crop at a time. So take me to to Jorgensen Landon cattle and your thought process behind your strict management of your rotation to keep the right kind of diversity following to help maintain as much of that microbiome as possible. speaker-0: Sure. Well, it's difficult in in in most production models to grow multiple crops at the same time because if they're being harvested for grain, that presents problems. If they're being harvested for forage, that that lends itself an opportunity, which we've done a number of different forage blends that have multiple different species in them, which are quite successful. But in our generally our rotation is such that we are two years into a similar species and then at least two years away from that species. So a good example would be spring wheat or winter wheat, spring wheat or oats, excuse me, then going to a winter wheat. And then from a winter wheat, we would be going to a corn, which is a warm season grass, and we'd probably do that crop for two years. So that's the fourth year. After the fourth year, then we can go to a soybean or we can go back to a cereal grain, we can go to an alfalfa. But what it does is it it broadens and lengthens out those intervals rather than just a monoculture, monoculture, monoculture, corn bean, corn bean. You begin to break up disease cycles, weed cycles, insect cycles, all of those things are broken apart when you intensify that rotation. Plus Some of those crops give you the opportunity to throw in a cover crop where you're really diversifying that rotation quickly and you're lengthening out the period of time that you have a living root in the system. So you're you're fulfilling some of those first principles that we've talked about just by way of diversifying the rotation and opening up windows of opportunity to put in cover crops. speaker-1: And maybe we haven't done this previously, but you mentioned a few of the the things you like in a cover crop mix. Obviously, cover crop is not a monoculture. No. You're using a a blend when you plant a cover crop. Speak to that a little bit as far as a true additional add of diversity, not just another crop, but a true diverse addition back to that ground. speaker-0: Sure. And when you're thinking about cover crop mixes, the first thing you want to think about is the carbon to nitrogen ratio of those. So you don't want to get that ratio above 20 or 22 to one. So you have to be careful not to have too many high carbon crops in there or too many low carbon crops in there. A high carbon crop is going to degrade very, very slowly and take a lot of nitrogen to provide that degradation. Whereas a low carbon crop Is going to take far less time to degrade, far less nutrient to do that process. So if you keep that ratio in mind, plus if you ⁓ put in multiple different species, and we're talking about warm and cool season grasses, warm and cool season broadleaves, some brassicas, legumes, forbs, there's all kinds of different things that we can do. And so the more diversity you bring to that table, The more natural it becomes for that system in the soil. And what I really like about the concept of adding those cover crops in is that we are letting them scavenge that soil system for any excess nutrients that might be out there. To me, an excess nutrient's pretty much a waste. So we can look at it in terms of economically getting more benefit out of the nutrients that we buy and apply by capturing them. cycling them into a carbon. We can also think about how it's conditioning the soil, right? Keeping a living root. We're building more of a diverse biome of microbes and fungi. Plus we're maybe using excess moisture. In some cases, ⁓ we have too much rain or too much water. That's a great way to to tie up. But but fourthly, I think it gives us in in our operation anyway, Gives us an opportunity to get cattle out there and graze. And that's that's a huge economic boon for us that we'll talk about in the next segment. speaker-1: What what do you see for your your general producer out there as their biggest limitation in putting more diversity into their into their program today? speaker-0: Right. So I often see the corn soybean rotation as is a tough one because of the harvest limitations are usually, you know, September, October, November. It's pretty difficult to get a well-established cover crop ⁓ in that time frame. There are some successful growers out there that are that are spreading cover crop seed in a growing crop and getting that crop established during the primary crops growing season. without impeding or reducing yield. So that when they harvest there's already a a blanket, ⁓ if you will, of newly emerged cover crop. It's a great system. ⁓ it's not a hundred percent ⁓ effective in every case, but it's certainly a good option. That's the biggest I think that's one of the largest limitations. Frankly, though, I think people are stuck in a box or a rut of saying, well, I'm not going to spend $20 or $30 or $40 an acre for something I don't harvest. When they don't think about what that cover crop is actually doing in terms of its diversity and what it's doing for that soil system, to me that's a profit. That's a plus. But they if they can't harvest something and put it in the bank, to them it's not worth doing. speaker-1: So let let's even step step back again there, Brian, and and let's say that that they don't wanna take the step to a cover crop necessarily. What what strategies can they implement to say add a a winter wheat, a spring wheat? How how does somebody get to that point to where then, as we've talked about a bunch, now all of a sudden we've opened the windows of opportunity for cover crop, something along those lines? speaker-0: Well, introducing a cereal grain is probably an easiest e one of the easiest steps that ⁓ producers can look at. And there's a lot of people successfully planting a rye crop, for example, behind corn ⁓ after harvest in the fall. And that rye will emerge quite quickly and it's gonna grow rapidly. And rye, incidentally, in a from a cereal grain's perspective, is one of the fastest root generators there are. It can ⁓ generate a deep and robust root very quickly. ⁓ and that's what we really looking for. And then in the spring, they have many options. They can terminate that plant and plant soybeans right into that, or they can harvest it as a forage crop. They can graze it as a forage crop. So there's some options. So ⁓ there isn't a lot of limitations as long as you let your imagination go and just try some things on a small scale. speaker-1: Right. And so and so what we're saying is that even a small change can make big impacts on your on your diversity and your environment. speaker-0: Small, subtle changes can make big impacts. And when as as things go on as you have those successes and some of those failures, you're gonna learn what works and what doesn't, and you're gonna continue to expand and grow on those. speaker-1: So, you know, I I think obviously something that we've we touched on in the last episode is the is the marketing opportunities and that being, you know, a rate limiting factor in some of this conversation, just like you talked about, maybe not having a a crop to go a grain to take to the elevator as a cash crop. We use a lot of feed resources here. ⁓ Touch first of all on, you know, that opportunity to blend if you have the opportunity to to put feed up versus a single crop system. You know, I know we do a lot of OP here and as nutritionists obviously love that love that product. ⁓ touch on that side of it versus a single crop going in, right? speaker-0: So ⁓ our operation with the livestock obviously it lends itself a lot of opportunities to grow a lot of different forage crops and and ⁓ so we do some blending here with the oats and peas or in past years we've had some some fairly good success with blending soybeans with some corn and some some gra and grain sorghum. So blending crops is going to solve a couple of your problems. It's going to bring the diversity to your table. It's going to bring in some cases your protein levels or your feed values up. It's going to bring your energy levels up ⁓ and not sacrif and not necessarily sacrifice tonnage production. So those kinds of things are very easy to implement when you don't have to worry about marketing a product. We're we're marketing it to our bull side and to our feed yard side. So That diversity in itself blends itself very well in in developing or feed rations, as you well know. So that's why I think we've been very, very successful with with bringing in those all those different species, because we have a place to put them. speaker-1: Right. And even at that point, diversity, can it reduce some risk even if I'm going back with ⁓ say a wheat crop or a rye crop? Can I reduce some risk from an economics and marketing standpoint rather than just having the corn and beans and being beholden to those two markets? speaker-0: Well, absolutely. So y I just don't rely on cash grain markets. I mean, there's very little that leaves this operation that we have to rely on that. So being able able to develop a feedstuff or a forage product, even if you don't have cattle, there are markets out there that person can look at. There are neighbors that have feed yards, there are neighbor neighbors that have cattle. There are outlets of which you can go and seek those markets. They just take a little extra effort in doing so. And oftentimes you'll find of large benefits in doing that because in some cases there's a demand that nobody really understands or knows that is there. So I think you just have to to seek out those opportunities. But more often than not, those those market opportunities are closer to home than you think. speaker-1: Right. You would you would be amazed how how many, you know, there's a small dairy twenty miles down the road that it would be mutually beneficial for both of you in putting diversity into your rotation. Right. Where it where it's you know it's of economic benefit for you, both from soil health and from a true economic standpoint. speaker-0: Yes. one of the key points that I talk about when I do presentations is keeping our carbon at home. And that's a good illustration of doing just that, in that everything that we harvest here, I'd say more than 85% of that carbon stays local. It stays here. And oftentimes it goes back on the ground in forms of of livestock or and or compost manure. So That carbon is pretty much staying where it started. And conversely, if you look at the corn soybean model and the wheat model by itself, all of those grains, farmers are having to market those out and export ⁓ sometimes out of the country, out of the United States. We're exporting those crop nutrients, those carbon elements out. meaning that we have to replace those somehow, right? So if you think of it in those broad terms, that really hits home. And we're getting a little bit out of the scope of the diversity thing, but I think it the diversity lends itself to those market opportunities you don't normally think of. speaker-1: And you know, I think something that ties right on that is are you able to reduce some inputs? We're we're we think of doing this as outputs, you know, whether it's cost of seed with no ⁓ common way of marketing. You know, we think of all that as outputs, but can we reduce inputs by going with a more diverse speaker-0: Certainly. So if you add in the benefits of all the principles we've talked about, including diversity, you're going to bring to that soil table a lot more different microbes. You're going to bring more beneficial pathogens back into the system. You're going to bring things back into what nature had as a balance. I mean in nature you didn't need pesticides. You didn't need herbicides, insecticides, nematocides. Fungicides. We didn't need any sides. So when you get that system back in balance, it's obvious that you're not going to have to apply as many or any of those sides to grow a crop. And so we've seen that, we've witnessed that. ⁓ I think ⁓ as our system gets better and better, it keeps building, we're gonna use less and less of those all the time. speaker-1: And obviously all of that, you know, anchors into long-term profitability and long term overall health of a program. ⁓ generational ability to be here is something that we've talked about a lot. So I'm taking the step and we're gonna move from a corn and beans monoculture rotation to start adding in speaker-0: Without question. Absolutely. speaker-1: more diverse crops. How am I gonna know what I'm doing is working, say, three to five years down the road? You know, what are some changes I'm gonna see that are gonna start telling me, okay, we're doing the right things. speaker-0: So we typically see once we introduce ⁓ a cereal grain, for example, into a row crop, you're gonna see typically an increased yield potential on the on the following crops. Just because we've brought that extra element of biology in the system and we've we've had a longer term living root in that system. So I've I've talked to many, many farmers over the years that have have introduced just a a cereal grain, whether it's cereal rye or a wheat or an oat into their corn bean rotation, and just about every one of them, without exception, has said, yes, we've seen significant yield increases on the following crop. Usually it's corn. And so the the problem that they have is marketing. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: That's usually the stumbling point. It's not being able to grow that extra crop. It's figuring out how to market it. And so that to me is always the common stumbling point. And that's where I think they have to develop, you know, forage markets and go to their friends with the livestock in the equation and figure out how to capitalize on those. But they're gonna see they're gonna see subtle ⁓ increases in their soil health almost immediately. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: ⁓ after three to five years they're gonna see significant changes and to a point where they're gonna be looking at reducing their nitrogen and phosphate and potash inputs. ⁓ they're gonna be releasing more micronutrients as well that have been tied up in the system for many times, many many years. They're also gonna see reductions in insects, reductions in diseases. It's just it comes with it comes with what happens in when you see balance in a system. speaker-1: So so basically what we're getting to is that we're not managing for a corn yield. We're managing an ecological system to produce at the best of its ability year in and year out. speaker-0: Correct. And I would go further and say I wouldn't look for any crop yield. I would look for return on investment. We certainly don't want to lose a lot of yield and typically we do not see that. But I don't I'm not driven by how well that corn crop or that bean crop or that wheat crop is gonna yield following these. I want to look at my return on my investment. Right. And I think that's where it's gonna win nine times out of ten. speaker-1: Yeah, man, you talk about, you know, marketing a and strategies there. If we look to our to our friends in the South and Oklahoma and the the panhandle of Texas, ⁓ there's a lot of wheat that gets grazed that ⁓ is grazed by people that don't own it. all kinds of opportunities out there. speaker-0: And that's that's a practice we started doing here. ⁓ that was unheard of five, ten, ten years ago. ⁓ we've grazed some, not all cases. It depends on the fall. Right. ⁓ depends on how well established you get. But that's a great example of and a wonderful way to get livestock out there on the system. But it's a great economical way to feed livestock and it's a great way to improve your soil health. ⁓ you just have to go out and be creative. There are multitudes of different ⁓ outlets out there now that help connect growers with livestock growers that they can share information and they can actually find people that have cattle if they want to graze some stocks or they can have there might be guys with cattle that are looking for somebody that has some corn stocks or some cover crop. There's outlets out there out right now as we speak that are working very well and helping connect those dots. speaker-1: Yep. And I guess let's let's jump back, Brian, because this is something that that I failed to set you up for earlier. When we talk about this diversity and we've talked about a lot of crops, we never really define the difference between our warm seasons and cool seasons. ⁓ Broadleafs, legumes. Why don't you go ahead and kinda give us a breakdown of what you're using today in those in those categories as they fit into your rotations? Yeah. speaker-0: So when you talk about warm season and cool season grasses, ⁓ obviously it's it's pretty much how they sound. The cool season grasses are gonna be those that are gonna come early in the spring when the soil temperatures are cool. They're going to mature and reproduce in cooler weather, ⁓ versus a warm season grass, which is probably gonna be planted in later spring, early summer, and it's gonna mature and and and reproduce in the hotter or warmer. parts of the of the year. Same would be said about broadleaf. And that could be soybeans, it could be peas, it could be any of those crops that clovers, ⁓ which are legumes. Some of those broadleaves can be legumes and some of them don't have to be. Right. But they again, there are ones that are best most productive in the spring and then there are those that are most productive in the later months of the year. ⁓ in a if you look in a in a pasture, you'll see that in the spring. You'll see the some species of grass that you won't see in the late summer versus the ones that you see in late summer you won't see in the spring. So that's the same dynamic as we would see in a in a and so the idea is to is to introduce as many of those back into the system as we possibly can. speaker-1: And I I guess, you know, back to the native prairie state. When we look across the pasture, you hope to see a good mix of warm season, cool season. Again, back to the the soil armor, a living route. It all ties into that diversity that that ecosystem is functioning. Yes. Because it has all these different Growing seasons tied into it. speaker-0: And it's we try and do that as closely as we can on a cropping system. you know, there's some there's some fellows out there that are and I think we we mentioned this earlier that are are planting multiple species and harvesting them for grain and then separating those grains. That's certainly in a a good way of doing that. And actually there are some multiple species that can be harvested as grain and made into a feed crop. So Just you you're limited by your imagination. Absolutely. You have to sometimes create the market, but you just have to be willing to try. And Mother Nature's very tolerant when it becomes comes to mixing species. ⁓ she generally doesn't care what you mix together. What does matter though is what you do culturally before that. If you're applying certain herbicides on certain crops, that's going to have an impact on your ability to to do. kinds of things. So you have to be very careful. You have to be planning ahead about what you're doing chemically prior to doing any of those kinds of crops. speaker-1: And if if somebody listened back to our our diversity or our innovation episode that we did, ⁓ we talked about some of the wild things that that have been tried here. ⁓ and they're not wild. They're things that ⁓ with a little bit of tweaking and a little more rain, ⁓ again back to where the blessing for Jorgensen Landon cattle is the feedlot. Yeah. speaker-0: Absolutely. I mean we any crop can be turned into a feed crop. And rarely do we have a complete crop failure. Rarely. In fact in in my lifetime I've only seen a handful of those where we it rains so little that it didn't grow. We always seem to get some sort of a crop. And no matter what that crop is, we grow those that can be converted to a feed crop. And the beautiful thing about a rumen is that she can eat turn into anything and turn it into speaker-1: Really doesn't care. Yep. I think we've had a really good discussion, Brian. Sum up this conversation around diversity and give the folks a few key take homes. Yeah. speaker-0: Doesn't care. It's it's a beautiful thing. ⁓ Yeah, and I I really think that we need to step out of that paradigm of the farm program and the crop insurance and the typical market channels and think beyond that and start looking at what the soil system really likes and think about a native prairie, think about a forest, think about any place in nature, and you're gonna find diversity. And you're gonna find in that within that system it's self-contained. We're not having to do anything with it. It's fully functioning by itself without any sides. And so when you put all these pieces of the puzzle together, diversity is part of that puzzle that's really, really important. And if you start bringing and introducing different levels of diversity into your cropping system today, you will begin almost immediately to start seeing some of those benefits pop up. in increased soil health, increased yields, increased or decreased dependency on sides to prevent your problems. So it's really a matter of trial and error. Yep. It's a willingness to try something different. speaker-1: Yep. Yep. And I I think the for me the big takeaway is that ⁓ to a point your biggest your biggest limitation in all of this is your imagination. If you can can think of it, ⁓ there's probably a way to market it. speaker-0: Absolutely. Absolutely. And the best way to market it's through the livestock. So that's that's really ⁓ as simple as I can get it. speaker-1: Yep. Thank you, folks. I think this was a good conversation, Brian. Thank you again, producer Boston behind the computer. And we will see you guys next time on Field Notes. Thank you for checking out part two of our series with Brian Jorgensen on soil health. Be sure to tune back in through July, and we will be bringing you part three, the final part, ⁓ to wrap up this series. Thank you guys again for listening. We appreciate it.