Latest / The Source – The Jorgensen Land & Cattle Podcast / Episode 6: Drought Management with Soil Health in Mind

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Episode 6: Drought Management with Soil Health in Mind · The Source – The Jorgensen Land & Cattle Podcast

• speaker-0: Yeah. 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. Hello folks. Welcome back to The Source. ⁓ we have been gone for a little while. Hands up accountability on my end. I got busy with a bull sale and ⁓ did not get any episodes recorded. But we are gonna get busy. ⁓ you're gonna see a lot more content coming from us. ⁓ hopefully shortly, you'll start being able to look for us weekly. We are we're excited about that. ⁓ So on on today's episode, ⁓ joined again by Mr. Brian Jorgensen that you guys have met before. we truly enjoy Brian's insight when he takes the time to jump on. ⁓ excited to talk to him today about a topic that is very relevant. ⁓ all across the the United States right now and that would be be drought management and ⁓ in the world that Brian lives in it's drought management with soil health in mind. ⁓ so Brian I guess the the first thing I kinda wanna lead you into ⁓ when it comes to to this conversation is is kinda define drought. You know, 'cause we use the term all the time, lots of different ways. ⁓ If you wanna go ahead and just kinda define it and then maybe some levels that you look at, ⁓ and just some thought process behind that. speaker-0: Well, certainly. Well first of all, thanks Jamie for for doing this. I think it's a very relevant topic. as we sit today, things are pretty critical. ⁓ and ⁓ you know when you talk about drought, there's lots of different perceptions of drought. here in the central part of the state of South Dakota, it's not uncommon to be abnormally dry. But we are beyond abnormally dry. ⁓ we've had a series of years now where our parti precipitation levels have actually averaged out near normal, but they're coming at very odd intervals and very odd times of the year. and coupled with the fact that our winter precipitation has been very scant the last several years. And the snowfall levels obvious obviously play a big role for us for recharging ⁓ in the springtime and the last two seasons we've not had ⁓ much of any snow precipitation. And and so coupled with that too is we've had some you know intermittent periods of very hot, very low humidity, hot drying winds that have sucked a lot of the reserved moisture out of the system. So we are if you look at the drought index, we are kinda on the edge, the very from what I w just looked at a little bit ago, we're kinda on the western edge of an extreme drought s ⁓ scenario and that stretches down into southeastern South Dakota but it also covers a large portion of of western Nebraska and Oklahoma, Kansas, ⁓ and into Texas. Now Texas is starting to get some Some precipitation, but it covers a lot of cow country. that's where I think it's it's quite critical. But if we're gonna let's focusing on just the crop side of the equation today, I've been farming for a little over forty one years, and this is the first time that I've lost almost half of my winter wheat acres. a year ago we we lost A little bit we didn't lose any acreages, we didn't take any out or abandon them. This year we actually abandoned about eight hundred and some odd acres ⁓ by just putting in oats as a cover crop to to salvage it as a grazing crop or or wheat, and we'll cover that in a little bit. But the the level of severity today is probably as bad as I've seen in my lifetime. Nineteen seventy six was It was a bad one. as I I was eleven years old then and I can remember barely putting up any feed. ⁓ there wasn't any grain crops harvested. Most everything that we had grown at that time were salvaged as a feed crop. ⁓ we exported our cows out into the Black Hills and unfortunately they succumbed largely to the pine needles and aborted about two thirds of the Of the cow herd. ⁓ since seventy six. speaker-1: But ⁓ that's not a story I've heard. We'll have to we'll have to have that one another time. speaker-0: And that's that yeah, that one goes way back and and that one hurt a lot. But since that time we've never we've never experienced the the kind of dryness we're seeing today. so going into basically last fall, ⁓ if we're looking at the twenty twenty-six crop year, and my crop year basically starts on September first when we start thinking about planting winter wheat. ⁓ the first ⁓ probably third of our winter wheat crop was planted before the twentieth of September. And we caught a little bit of a ⁓ rain event ⁓ about the first I think it was around the tenth or so of September, ⁓ three quarters of an inch that got that first seeding up pretty good and got some decent root establishment. And then we got some hot, dry winds and dried out the s topsoil. So everything that was basically planted after that twentieth of September date never emerged or if it did emerge it was quite spotty. and that's okay normally we can get by with that as long as we get some winter precipitation to kind of make up for that. The the winter wheat really only needs to swell in order to vernalize. And so it's always been, well, you know, we'll catch that little bit of rain or snow. fernalize that crop so that in the spring it can go ahead and go through its growth periods. But we actually didn't we didn't receive enough snowfall in the f in in in the form enough to to do that. So as the spring went on, as you recall, ⁓ was quite warm. There was a couple periods that were cold, but it was dry. And if you look at our bull yard today and you were out in ⁓ Jamie, you know they were they were excellent to work in. There wasn't any mud. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: And so it was easy to to evaluate bulls, it was easy to sort bulls and the manure management's been pretty pretty darn easy, but ⁓ that comes at a cost and and so we're realizing that today. ⁓ so when you talk about drought levels, I would say we're on the edge of a an extreme drought situation, and I think with the forecast that we're looking at today, the next two weeks, the first half of June is going to be pretty ugly. And ⁓ as you know, you know, we the the cereal grains, they're pretty well baked. I think, you know, we're we're gonna need some rain to get those to yield. We've got corn, we've got beans, we've got Milo coming out of the ground. All of those are gonna be critical to get, you know, some moisture here in the next couple of weeks. speaker-1: Right. So, you know, Brian, we've kinda we've set the stage here as far as what what kind of differing levels of drought and you know, as you said in South Central South Dakota you kinda live in ⁓ we live in drought year round. ⁓ but but for something that's this level From a ⁓ you know, at Jorgensen, Lana Cattle we talk so much about strategic planning and and ⁓ you guys are extremely disciplined in in planning at Jorgensen's. ⁓ did you guys actually have a written drought plan? ⁓ have you done those exercises, Brian, a as far as that is concerned? And ⁓ if you have, give me a little bit of kind of the the sausage making there. speaker-0: Sure. Well, it started last fall, Jamie, you know, in terms of in in my from my perspective, I knew that things were going to be kind of critical, but we were kind of counting on getting some winter precipitation like we normally do. But you start thinking about it, and so in the back of your mind you're going, Well, if we don't get moisture, what are we gonna do? And so and already we were talking about grazing wheat acres this spring. And at that time the price level on the winter wheat was around four bucks. So we're like, well, w it makes total economic sense to to go ahead and graze or forage a lot more of those wheat acres. we also started to think about our hay inventories. ⁓ we've been fortunate enough to put together a pretty good inventory of hay over the last several years. ⁓ and but we go through a lot too. So But we're we were already starting to think about we better start getting our hands on a little bit more hay and since that time, you know, that has ramped up and we've been able to accumulate somewhere between fifteen hundred and and two thousand ton of hay outside of what we would normally put up. Now that's certainly not enough, but we did it at a time when the price level wasn't going sky high. Already we're hearing reports of ⁓ of hay hitting two thirty, two forty a ton grass hay. ⁓ and that's just the beginning, I think. And so it could get very, very pricey and very, very well, even if you can find it. ⁓ I'm hearing reports all over the the county and adjacent counties that the hay is left. It a lot of it went to Nebraska already. ⁓ to fulfill their needs because of the fires. So it that that could be critical. So you start over time you start developing plans and just a you know ⁓ last month we already had dis decided that you know some of this wheat we're gonna have to abandon so we planted oats over the top of it in hopes that we would either get a forage crop to chop and put in the kitchen or we would be able to graze it. Well now the plan is it's changed a little bit in that ⁓ we're looking at our pastures and our pastures are not changing. They're not in fact they're going backwards. But thank goodness, you know, the practices that we've implemented the last ten or so years with using the collars and using intensive management practices, our pastures today are they're okay, but without any precip, they're not going to hold up. So we've decided to forego turning cows out to pasture until we can utilize some of these abandoned wheat acres with the oats and ⁓ spotty wheat in it. To buy a little bit more time for those pastures to try and recover in hopes that if we do catch a couple of inches of precip, we can start working on some of those summer ⁓ more warm season grasses. The spring grasses, Jamie, are are done. Never in my lifetime have I seen springs, you know, cool season grasses get boot top high and start turning brown. That's just not normal. So you know great yeah, it it's i it we're in a situation that I've not seen before. speaker-1: Yeah. And when you when you touch on the cool seasons, you know, from this year's perspective specifically, not only did it not have any moisture, but we really didn't have any cool season weather growing days. We we got we got really warm really fast and and we just we never really had the right kind of environment for those those grasses to go ahead and come on with it. speaker-0: No. Right. And we noticed in our alfalfa crops too that we had a well, just this month alone we had three or four frost events that got down into the, you know, low twenties. where you have an actively growing plant, whether it's a grass or a lagoon, it can only take so much of that. And it's you know, you're gonna d you're gonna damage the leaf tissue enough where ⁓ it's not garnering any energy from the sun and if there's no moisture down below. you've got two things working against it. It's two stresses that it just it it's not going to work its way out of. So we're going to start clipping our alfalfa this week. It's it's literally six, seven inches tall. if we can scrape together a windrow, we'll pick it up and try and bail it. If not, we're just going to let it lay there, but in hopes, again, that we clip off the damaged material and hopefully catch rain and and we'll give it a shot of groceries and hopefully it'll grow a crop. Now the pastures on the other hand we're not doing that. So we're we're going to allow those pastures to rest for hopefully until we get close to the first of July or into June and ⁓ then turn cows out in them. And I think that's gonna buy us a lot of time. ⁓ so those acres that we are grazing, the oat wheat mix ⁓ that we're grazing will turn right around as soon as we're done with that, and we're going to intercede a a warm season cover crop blend that'll be made up largely of ⁓ sedan grasses or sorghum along with some other ⁓ things, ⁓ you know, some brassicas and and maybe some turnips, some rapes, some clovers, whatever, and some oats. And hopefully get those up so that we can graze those, you know, that August that late July, August, September timeframe. And again in the hopes of taking some pressure off some of the native systems. So We're yes. To answer your question, we have we have implemented a pretty large plan to put in place in in case of all these things coming together and it looks like it's gonna happen. speaker-1: And and so, you know, and we've you've you've brushed on a lot of things that I think we're gonna talk about here in a minute. But ⁓ everybody that has had the opportunity to meet you, Brian, and ⁓ get to hear you speak knows that the health of that biological soil system is is your true passion. It's not it's not the farming, it's not it's not the actual activity of making a crop, it's it's the health of that system. So what I what I thought ⁓ as I mentioned earlier would be really good to talk about today is talking about drought management and drought conditions with soil health in mind. So ⁓ let's let's start on the cropping side, Brian, and ⁓ just kind of talk about what you're doing today and and how you address Managing your soil health when we're in the conditions that we're in today where, you know, sometimes ⁓ to be profitable there's there's things that still have to take place. speaker-0: Right. So let's begin with soil health principles and those principles apply Whether you're cropping in an intense cropping system or you're managing a native prairie system, those five soil health principles that we adhere to ⁓ generally will give you a incredibly good leg up on dealing with these kinds of conditions. Now, we all know that the silver bullet is rainfall. No matter what system you're talking about, no matter what management or how good you are. Without water, it's not gonna happen. But it will buy you a lot of time and when we do get rainfall, and I will go into those principles in detail here, but when you do get some rainfall, if the system is set up properly, it's going to recuperate much, much quicker and in some cases be better than it was before. but really it all falls back on on adhering to the five principles. And the first one of those is making sure that we on the cropping side and on the pasture side that we don't deteriorate the armor on that soil. In other words, the residues that are decaying on the surface of that soil create a quilt, if you will, on that soil and protects that soil. It tempers the soil temperature changes from hot to cold and cold to hot. It flattens that curve and biology below it doesn't like much temperature over about a hundred and eighteen degrees. Bare black soil on a ninety degree day it'll get up to hundred and forty or fifty or sixty degrees. And so anytime you have bare soil you have a problem. Okay? So number one is protecting that armor, and that means not removing a lot of residues, that means no tillage. In a pasture situation, it means do not overgraze. Go into a winter time with at least three or four or five inches of of cover there. and that's what protects it, right? So and and so without the without that, you're you're you're beginning with a negative. If you have that in place, you've already got ⁓ the first step in and recovering from these kinds of conditions, because when you do get moisture. it's gonna fall through that residue slowly and it's gonna be like a sponge and it's gonna pr slowly percolate down. You're not gonna disperse the clay particles on the surface if they're exposed. And you're going to be able to hold the water that we get. It's going to slow down the evaporotranspiration of that water just by way of having that quilt in place. So it does a lot of different things and that's why it's so so extremely important. The second thing is disturbance and and when the first thing you think about when you talk about disturbance that comes to mind is tillage. And it's tillage is a huge disturbance. It's like a nuclear holocaust in the soil. Because you're disturbing all that residue, that quilt, you're breaking it up and you're oxidizing it. You're rapidly decomposing it and you're rapidly diminishing the fuel tank of the biological system below it. And also you're exposing the clay particles, your particles, you're evaporating the moisture that's being held in there, right? And when you get rainfall, it will disperse and wash away. It has a tendency to not sink in like it should. So if you can do those first two things and do them long term, not just one year, but long term, and build your organic matter. In our native systems we have about at least a five percent organic matter. In our cropping systems we're about four. But we have seen that now the last couple years because of diminished rainfall that that organic matter is starting to drop back. So we have to be very careful about how much we take straw off of a wheat field or for cutting silage. We've got to be able to replace that with a cover crop or something to maintain that residue or maintain that armor and to also minimize that the impact of the disturbance. Now disturbance can also mean compaction. That means if you're over-grazing or you have a lot of heavy equipment, you have tillage, all of that is going to create compaction. So we got to minimize that. Disturbance can be a lot of things. It can be tillage, it can be compaction, it can be too much fertilizer, it can be excess ⁓ inputs like herbicides, ⁓ fungicides, anything that creates a disturbance in the system. Okay? Right. So it's not just tillage. So do you have any comments before I move on to number three? speaker-1: And so there Brian, just to just to touch on it a little bit more, you know some of us in our minds want to think if that ground is ripped the the rain water will soak in faster. But I I think we look at that wrong to where there needs to be something on top of the soil to catch that water to actually get absorption. Would that be right be correct in that mindset? speaker-0: So ripping is a short term solution to a long term problem. And it's a band-aid. And ripping can open up the soil profile, but only if it's dry. ⁓ If you go out there when it's wet, you're just going to do nothing but compact. ⁓ It breaks up all the micro and macro pores that are naturally in the system. Disturbing, that's a disturbance, right? So it's going to definitely take time to bring that back. ⁓ and it c it's costly. It's a horribly expensive process to deep rip soil. And normally if your if your system is lacking in the first two components, the residue on the surface and if you're disturbing it, you've already upset the apple cart and it's gonna take time for that to recover. Now short term, yes, it might help you garner a little bit more moisture deep when you get those, but it's gonna evaporate back out, right? And you've already created that destruction of that system, so it's going to take time to rebuild that. So the long term solution is to follow the five principles. Right. Absolutely. And as we go through those, they'll all kind of come together and they'll make sense. And again, it's not just crop ground we're talking about. It it it applies to grazing management practices equally as well. Right. So yeah. But yeah, that's the perception. The other perception, Jamie, is that And I talked to a fellow last night from ⁓ the southern part of Gregory County that they're in a very similar situation. And ⁓ I said, Well, why don't you just he had some rye that looked pretty decent, and I said, Why don't you just graze it? He says, Well, I don't want the cattle on my ground, it might just it's just gonna pack the hell out of my ground. And they're sandier soils. And I said, I I get that, but the reason that they're doing that is that you've you've depleted your organic matter. Generally what we see here, Jamie, is if we have organic matters less than three percent, then we do see some compaction issues. But if we're above three percent, generally we see where that is more like a sponge and it it can rebound from compaction, just like a sponge. And He thought about that a minute and he goes, Well that makes sense, but it's not gonna help me today and I said, You're right, it's not gonna help you today, but you need to start thinking about these things long before they hit and that's why the principles are so important. speaker-1: Right. Alright, go on to go on to number three, Brian. speaker-0: So number three is a living root and it doesn't really tie into a drought scenario, but in in the case of in the cropping side, if we don't most of our crops are annuals, they're all well for the most part, other than the alfalfa. So what we don't have in a generalized cropping system is a deep root. So it's a shallow root, it's going to rely on those timely rains to keep themselves viable. ⁓ but if you set your system up early By creating principle one and two, your soil will be conditioned to allow the roots to go down deeper and capture more nutrient, more moisture. ⁓ Whereas a prairie system, you have deep living roots 365 days a year. And so those roots go down several feet. And so the prairie system can sustain itself much, much longer in a dry period of time than an annual crop will. So an annual crop needs, no matter what system it is, it's it's gonna need some it's gonna need some water. but that living root is so important in the soil biological system because that biological system communizes on those roots, right? It builds the the the communities around the root systems that are in place. And as long as they're there three hundred and sixty-five days a year. And as long as that plant above the soil is still capturing sunlight, okay, that sunlight's being converted through photosynthesis into carbons, carbohydrates, sugars, that all go back down into the root and feed the ecosystem below it. If we don't have a root there, that whole process stops. And that's the beginning of a desertification. and so in a in an annual cropping system. So you have a root that starts maybe on wheat, for example, in September, goes dormant through the wintertime, but even though it's dormant, that root system is still alive and viable and holding biology. Coming into spring, it greens back up and everything goes to work. Come July, that's all gone again. So it's really important for us to get a cover crop behind that wheat that. serves the purpose of feeding cattle later in the year, but the bigger purpose is to keep a living root in the system for as long as we possibly can. And using up excess nutrients that might be mobilized and move away and get lost. And then in today's environment, fertilizer is very expensive, right? So we want to try and recapture those excess nutrients and cycle those into making more carbon. ⁓ So the living root is is the third principle I is is extremely important if you want to to build the soil health over time, right? Right. But if you keep doing an annual crop and then stopping, you you develop a gap. And that gap just it make it makes it very difficult to build that process over time. Whereas in a native pasture system, well managed pasture system, then you keep growing that and keep getting it more viable. speaker-1: I'm gonna come back to this. I'm gonna come back to this so let let's go ahead and go on through through four and and five and then I'm gonna come back here. speaker-0: The the the fourth one is diversity in the system. And so diversity in the system means that we have not just one species of crop. And in the cropping system it's a lot different than it is in the native prairie system. The native prairie system is full of diverse grasses, warm and cool season, full of diverse lagoons, full of diverse forbs. And those are all interchanging at different intervals, keeping that living root. And creating systems that are diverse for different diverse systems of biology. And so they're they're all balanced in nature. And that's it's a wonderful, wonderful system, and it's one that we should learn from. In a cropping system, it's a lot more difficult to do that because we've cultured ourselves to grow a crop by itself. And remember, in nature, No matter where you go, whether it's a prairie system or a forest, you're never gonna see one species growing in nature. and so when you have just one species of crop growing, corn or soybeans or wheat, whatever alfalfa, ⁓ you're gonna have basically one set of root systems, you're gonna have one set of biology ⁓ biome that grows in that root system, and then at some point it it's done, right? It stops. And it it's matured and it it it becomes organic matter in the soil. So that's why having a diverse system is really important. And that's why cover crops, a diverse mix of cover crops, coming after as soon as you possibly can after your annual crops, whether it's behind wheat or it's behind ⁓ corn silage or whatever we can do to fit our system, then we created an opportunity to extend that. living root path and then it ⁓ creates an opportunity for us to grow feed or grow grazing acres so that we can put cattle back out on those acres. And so that leads us into number five, which is livestock integration. And that one to me is probably one of the most magical principles that we have in terms of what it does for the system. And you know as well as I do that on a well managed prairie system, if it's managed properly and there's livestock integrated in it, that it will self-sustain. We don't have to add anything to it other than rain. We don't have to fertilize it, we don't have to spray it for insects, we don't have to most of the time unless it's mismanaged, we don't have to spray it for any invasive species, because it's it's balanced and it's doing what it's supposed to do. If we bring that back to the crop side The first perception is, ⁓ I don't want cattle on my crop ground. Well, we've learned through many, many, many years of doing this that as long as it's managed properly, cattle don't have a negative impact. ⁓ In fact, we can bring organic matter levels up very, very quickly. And if you bring organic matter up, you're bringing the potential for soil health up as well, just by implementing grazing, ⁓ and especially in growing season. ⁓ we don't do a lot of in season growing season grazing. We will this year because of the drought, but normally we fall graze and winter graze the the cover crop, the corn stalks, those kinds of things. In either case, we're first of all we're we're getting the hoof out there. The the cattle have the rumen. They have a very similar biological pathway, just like the soil does. And when you mix those two together through the consumption of the residues or the consumption of the carbon through the rumen and out the back or out the front, they're going to be depositing that manure along with biology in it. Therefore you're you're you're increasing the biological community of the soil. The other thing about grazing that in the summer months when during the growing season is plants and the soil communicate through chemical signals. When a when an animal eats down the top half of that plant, and by inherently that's what they'll do. They'll eat the top portion of that plant because that's the most nutrient dense, and they'll move on. Well when they do that, they're sending a signal through their saliva down into the plant, down into the xylem and phloem of that plant, into the roots that send out signals to branch out that root, garner more water, garner more nutrition, and grow that plant. higher. Right. And the same can be said for a summer annual grazing system where you're s where you're grazing an annual crop. They top if you chew that top portion down and then move ⁓ off, well guess what? If you get the ample rainfall it's gonna robustly grow back and provide yet another opportunity to feed those animals. So the two are very they're very different in terms of annuals versus perennials, but they function the same in the way they're managed. So y if if you think about what we talked about earlier about grazing down the oats and the wheat and then moving them off, well we have an opportunity to either let that grow back or we can terminate it and add a another warm season crop to it and start that process all over again later in the season. So those are the five principles and those are the ones that if you follow them Adhere to those principles year in, year out, year in, year out, you're going to build a far higher resiliency in that soil. And when it does get the rainfall, it's going to bounce back like crazy and it's going to be very, very, very fruitful when it does. and it's going to be able to lower your cost too, by far. speaker-1: Let's ⁓ let's let's jump back here for just a second, Brian. ⁓ you talked about you know in those last three principles a living root, diversity, and livestock integration. And in these you know, years of drought and potential failure, someone may be inclined to not even plant those acres or or get a root. into them and what I'm getting from you is that that is the absolute wrong thing to do even if it's in the short term gonna be painful that that we're gonna have to plant that. We need to get a root in that system and it it's a perfect tie to your livestock integration at that point, right? speaker-0: Very much so. ⁓ I think people need to learn that they they don't have to have an elevator, or grain elevators is five. ⁓ we've been conditioned to believe that we need to grow that crop and remove that carbon source and take it to an elevator and then export it out. here we don't do that. I mean we do obviously sell some cash grains, but a large majority of our crop stays here and gets fed and comes back to the system eventually in the form of Compost or deposited naturally by the cattle. So but if you let that ground, let's just say today, we've got an opportunity to seed some cover crop. Well, it's just too damn dry, I'm not going to even bother with it. Well, then you're going to have a fallow system. You're going to have a system that the soil system has no living root in it. your biological system starts to go entirely out and before too long you have a desert. ⁓ and so you have to continually bet on the cum that you will eventually get moisture and we will. We can't say when, but eventually we will, and then we can re-establish that root system. And that will then open up another window of opportunity down the road to do that integration of livestock or to harvest a crop or whatever. So but you can't y you're not gonna get that if you leave the seed in the bag. ⁓ you just can't let that ground go dormant. speaker-1: And and they're ⁓ especially talking about about drought conditions and and even somebody that that doesn't own livestock, you know, there there's definitely still an opportunity to to plant a crop that that has a better chance of coming up, even even probably this late in the year, Brian. Yeah. Where ⁓ there's gonna be guys with with rangeland that are looking for a place to go with some cows. speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-1: So still it still a cash flow opportunity there even if you're not gonna get a crop off that ground. speaker-0: They just have to think differently than a combine and a semi. They have to they have to go out and I can almost tell you that this is gonna be one of those years when ⁓ folks are gonna be looking for places to put cows. They're gonna be looking for sources for feed. I it it I can tell you, ⁓ we we are almost too late in the year now to not expect that. ⁓ 'cause we've lost our cool season crop already. So and that's largely what we put up for hay ⁓ in this part of the world. And Tripp County is one of the largest hay producing counties in the state. And it's gonna be a a ⁓ fraction of what it was last year. So anything that you grow, ⁓ you're gonna have an opportunity to sell it as a forage crop. There's no question about it. Whether it's on the hoof in there on the on the field or by removing it, I'd rather do that. then remove it and sell it. but I'm gonna tell you that there will be there will be producers out there. If you have fences and access to water on that property, you will be able to you will be able to graze that property. And I can tell you pasture land right now is sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety bucks an acre. on a cow calf pear, that's expensive. So there's opportunity there. Not only are you gonna garner an insurance check from your failed crop, but you're gonna be able to capitalize on on putting some cattle or sheep or whatever out on a forage project. speaker-1: Right, and and polywire's cheap compared to not doing anything on it even if it's not fenced today and with you know fencers are good enough today you can keep kettle in. speaker-0: That's right. And Yeah. You just gotta you just gotta think that there's other ways of doing it rather than sticking your feet in the mud and saying, Well, I don't have anything to harvest, I don't have anything to sell, create it. It'll it'll I guarantee you there's market for it. speaker-1: So ⁓ at this point in the year, Brian, ⁓ if somebody hasn't done anything yet, which which hopefully the folks that are listening to us, they're probably on the ball anyway. If they haven't done anything yet, what would be maybe a crop or a blend that you would be looking at saying, Gosh, if I'm gonna try and capture some livestock value later in the year, what should I be looking at today? speaker-0: Yeah. At the very minimum I'd be looking at some type of a sedan grass or sorghum based type, warm season grass. ⁓ warm season grasses like sorghum are very drought tolerant anyway. As long as you have enough moisture to get them up out of the ground and get a root established, they may not ton out that well, but they will do something. and if they do get rain, they will produce a tremendous amount of low quality tonnage. But still You can you there's access in our case we're accessing dry distillers grains to add value to those lower quality grains putting in the ration. But if they have not planted anything yet, because ⁓ it's just you know it there's no way I'm gonna make anything work, that's that's the first thing I'd be doing is planting some sedan grass or a mix of sedan grasses and ⁓ some oats, some barley, ⁓ some forage barleys, put some brassicas in there, kale, anything. A lot of the a lot of these small seeded crops that are used in covers, you know, they don't take a lot of moisture. They they really don't. They but as long as they create that root and get it down and get started, they'll they'll scavenge for a lot. And I wouldn't worry about fertility. ⁓ unless they're completely void of fertility. ⁓ I wouldn't spend a lot of money on it because that's the other thing that we should talk about. ⁓ Jamie, is the fact that, you know, we're dealing in a drought stress condition. So the the forages that we have out there today are going to be high in nutrients. They're gonna be very nutrient dense and we need to be checking them to make sure that they're not high in nitrates. So everything that we're gonna be grazing and with the with the winter wheats and the oats, we're we're checking those to make sure that they're I'm sure they're gonna be okay because we don't use a lot of excess nitrogen, but The nitrates will c accumulate in the lower levels of that plant and it can be toxic. So we need to be careful about that. But I wouldn't spend a lot of money on fertility. We can foliar feed a lot of these things to get ⁓ through little bumps in the road. So ⁓ at the very minimum I'd be doing a forage sorghum and and mix in there whatever you want to. ⁓ and they can make a cow can make feed out of a fence post if she has to. So you know we you just gotta grow something. Gotta get something in the ground to grow it. speaker-1: Yeah, but I I am glad you brought that up, Brian. I was actually our minds were running the same line that ⁓ I did wanna caution everybody, the nutritionist in me wanted to remind everybody, let's make sure we're checking that stuff for nitrates and and prussic acid and just if we're gonna turn kettle on it, let's make sure we protect ourselves so we don't have another wreck. speaker-0: Exactly. And it's it's only fruit because we're we're just the the plant's just not growing. So it's going to accumulate a lot of those ⁓ nutrients in the base of the plant, towards the base of the plant. So you gotta be real careful. speaker-1: Okay Brian, I th I think we've done a good job of arming arming folks on the cropping side with with some ideas and suggestions right now. Let's shift gears to the the rangeland guys and the the Kel Kiev producers, the sheep guys out there listening. ⁓ let's talk about managing these drought conditions from a grazing standpoint. ⁓ you already touched on the collars. I know we're gonna dig in there. But ⁓ I'm just gonna kinda cut you loose here and and you take us where you wanna go with this. speaker-0: Okay, well I'm not the rangeland guy, but I know enough about soil health to know the principles apply there as well. First of all, if they've if we're coming into this drought season already bare or we don't have any if we've if if we have abused that rangeland or pasture to the point where you can see a prairie dog from a half mile, then you probably better not put anything out there. Just plan on not even using it. You've got to let that thing recover. ⁓ in a case where you've been managing those pastures over the years, and I'm not saying we're perfect, but I can tell you one thing, we have doubled the capacity of our rangeland just by way of the collars and managing the intervals at which we graze those things. And we've been able to go from about eight acres per cow calf down to about four or less. And still have not you know, still have plenty of of residue there, plenty of Of get up and go. And if you're starting out with nothing, you're going to get nothing. But if you've managed it, I would take that chunk of property and let it rest a little bit longer this spring here, give it as much time as it can to recuperate. If it doesn't get rain, I would seriously evaluate and even putting cows on it. Now we're gonna have to do that, but we're gonna be very, very diligent about when we turn those. When we finally turn those cows out, we're going to really tighten up those those movement intervals ⁓ and and making sure that everything gets covered and that we may even have to go back over some of that ground. But we're gonna want to make sure that we're not taking any more than about three to four inches of that growth. We don't want to go any lower than that. ⁓ 'cause that once you go down below that on on any perennial grasses, it It inhibits the ability for that root to regrow because it takes so much longer for it to green back up and garner sunlight energy, right? And pull that back down in the form of carbons to make those roots expand. So once you take it down to the nub, it's not going to come back very quickly, it's gonna take a long time. And that's that's why I preface this thing by saying if we're going into this situation already there, you're in the no win situation. So If you've been managing them well, let's just push that release date off. If we can if we can find somebody that's got some some cereal grain, some rye, some oats, that they can turn out those cattle or if they can want to dry lot ⁓ and feed ⁓ that's fine too. But we just gotta keep those cows off those pastures for another couple three, four weeks. speaker-1: Yeah. And you know, you mentioned the collars, Brian, and and obviously we've we've embraced that technology. ⁓ tough year for a guy to have to learn it. But you can do you can do the same things that Brian's talking about with the grazing collars with polywire. Now it's gonna be work. But from a from a pasture management and and long term health and success standpoint, ⁓ may be something that a guy needs to consider, ⁓ Brian. speaker-0: Absolutely. I mean you can you can go out there in in a day in a situation like this, Jamie, I wouldn't be surprised if we're moving those cows every other day or sooner. so with us it's easy, you just create the electronic boundaries and they move. ⁓ but if you don't do that you're gonna lose that you're gonna be able to you're not gonna be able to control how much they consume because they'll eat it right into the ground if they have to. You just don't want ⁓ to do that. So you have to be diligent about moving those cows or those sheep, whatever. You gotta move them more often. Concentrate ⁓ into smaller paddocks and move them more often. Think about how the buffalo did it back in the day when there was millions of them roaming the prairie. They moved in mass. They hit an area, they hit it hard, and they moved on, and they probably didn't come back to that area. So That's the very same concept that we're talking about doing here. So it's very, very important whether you have the collars of being able to do that electronically or if you have to use the polywires or if you have good fences, if you've got good perimeter fences, start using cross cross fences, you know, your polywire cross fences. Access to water is your probably your biggest limiting factor. So you have to manage around the water. speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: I would also be I would also be thinking and you're the nutritionist here, I would make sure we've got plenty of protein out there. Forming tubs or whatever. So speaker-1: Yep, yep. And ⁓ you know the the thing about about dry lot and cows this time of year too and and even you know as we move into later in the summer, ⁓ especially guys like Kevin March, we're getting past peak lactation to the point to where she don't need a lot guys and ⁓ you know, obviously work with with the nutritionists that you work with. But ⁓ but she may not be happy standing in a dry lot with what she's got to eat. But you can you can fairly cost effectively limit feed those cows to get through through this time. And ⁓ you know, obviously us at Jorgensen Lana Cattle, ⁓ you really don't want to sell a cow because of of the the genetics that's there, you don't want to give that up. So ⁓ getting getting creative this this year is gonna be gonna be big. ⁓ distiller's grains is gonna play play heavy for a lot of guys. ⁓ there's options out there. Just ⁓ just have to be be willing to think outside the box. speaker-0: Yep. I think the other thing too, Jamie, and it's it's it's starting to come into play, but a lot of guys now are starting to wean early. ⁓ Well my son-in-law just weaned some of his calves at 90 days of age. and so that's gonna be interesting to watch that, but that's gonna take about twenty percent of the needs away from that cow. So in in a time like this, that's huge, that's a big number, and it's also gonna help her reproductively as well. So I I really would encourage guys to think about those guys that normally don't wean till October or November, they need to really reconsider that and figure out a w you know if they want to background those calves at home or find a home for them, but get them off. the cow as quick as they can this summer because that'll that'll make a huge impact on on the cow and it'll make a huge impact on the on the ⁓ soil resource that they're on too. speaker-1: Yeah and you know, a as scary as it is right now, that ninety-day old KF WAN two fifty, he's worth as much as the five hundred pounders were worth four years ago at the sale bar in your normal marketing cycle. So, you know, again a a blessing in the time of the the time in the industry in which this is happening, at least there's value there. You know, if if a guy does have to have to ship ⁓ and and ⁓ a at least it's not not what it could be. speaker-0: For sure that's I guess the final message I would have on Rangeland is if you incorporate all these things, you're you're gonna be benefiting it down the road long term. but if you take the short term route and take it down to nothing and r and completely consume what's out there the you're gonna pay for that for years and years to come. ⁓ we've seen it time after time where these pastures get beat to hell and they'll come back with brome grass in the spring and pretty soon there's there's thistles, there's just a whole bunch of unwanted species out there that are very, very difficult to undo. So the small things that you implement today will pay huge, huge dividends down the road. So don't abuse that system. You know you do everything you can not to Yeah. speaker-1: Alright Brian, I think we've ⁓ we've covered a lot of ground. ⁓ if anything we've stimulated a lot of thought, I think. ⁓ something something new ⁓ within the Jorgensen Landon Cattle Umbrella. ⁓ you're wearing the cap today, ideal soil solutions. ⁓ something big gonna happen in ideal on june seventeenth. ⁓ Brian, do you wanna just ⁓ just go ahead and let the folks know and ⁓ We'll see ⁓ see about driving some interest to come to ideal in June. speaker-0: Yeah, I'll give you a little history of how it all came about. But so I was fortunate enough by HappenScience to come across a company in the mid-90s that were definitely thinking differently about soil applied nutrients and growing crops and they brought me to the attention of looking at the soil f system first and balancing the biology, balancing the chemistry of the soil. Balancing the physical and all those things that were not taught or talked about in the mid-90s. And so I started working with that company and we have been working with them since the mid-90s. And so for years I sold soil amendment products, biological products, biostimulants for a company called Summit Gold, and we're still with them today. I sold that distributorship to our partnership three years ago. ⁓ with the hopes that ⁓ we would grow that into a a a bigger and larger business. And and then where we are today is where we s we we came up with the idea of the the ideal soil solutions and it incorporates the five soil health principles coupled with the ever emerging technologies of biological systems and foliar fed fertilizers. And a knowledge base that's not based on increasing yields and driving yields forward to make up for lost profits. It's lowering input costs, improving soil health, and increasing your IR ROI at the same time. And the reason I like that concept is because very, very few other companies out there, and now literally today there are hundreds of new companies popping up that are selling. biostimulants and biological products. But they're really not talking about the where's and the whys and the what's. They're just doing it to improve yield. We're gonna make you twenty more bushel of corn or ten more bushel of beans. All that's gonna do is drive the cost of everything else out around it. We need to we need to learn how to use less of the products that we've been taught to use more of to grow more yield. We need to just Go back to na Mother Nature and focus on soil health. That's why the five health soil principles are so incredibly important. Because if you're doing those things, then it's real easy to make that transition to a a a less of an input and more of a biological transition. And so that's where it's all started and that's where it's headed. So we're gonna we're gonna launch the company on June 17th with a summit here at our operation. ⁓ and we're going to have it's an interactive day of talking about the soil health principles and blending that in with the technologies of the products that we have to help make those steps a little bit less bumpy and more profitable and more affordable. And so somehow or another we can get information out there. If you go to ideal soil solutions dot com, you will see a a website that's brand new and it's a wonderful website. It kind of gives the explanation of all the products and the things that we do. It it lists the soil health principles, but it also gives you an opportunity to c click on our QR code and and get and get a spot at that at that seminar, at that summit. It's no cost, ⁓ it's a full day of activity and lunch will be provided. And ⁓ it would be a great place to whether you're just a gardener or if you are a golf course manager or somebody growing turf or somebody growing corn soybeans or somebody who's done nothing but rangeland. You're gonna learn about soil health and you're gonna learn why the principles are so important. So it come one, come all, ⁓ you'll learn a lot. speaker-1: Yeah, and we'll put put the links in the in the descriptions on these episodes, guys. ⁓ you know, and I I think from from what I know about about what these guys are working on with ideal soil solutions, you know, it it's not here just to put a product in your hands. It it's here to come alongside you and and be a partner and and help you as Brian said, be more profitable. Now now we we said nothing about yields, we said nothing about about that side of it. ⁓ in the end it's about profitability in this business and and being able to enjoy the lifestyle that that we've all been so blessed to to have being in this industry. speaker-0: And number one preserving and and and and making the soil better for the next generation. Because that's the only soil resource we have guys. We lose that, we're done. So we gotta take care of it. speaker-1: And so so with that, I thank y'all for joining us and thank you Brian for your time. This has been been really good and ⁓ we will we'll have you back on I'm sure several, several times over the next six, eight months as we roll forward here and ⁓ hopefully next time you're on, we're not talking about drought 'cause it come a flood in in ideal South Dakota and we'll have the other problem. speaker-0: I hope so. Thank you, Brian. We can always deal with things as long as we have water in the soil. speaker-1: You bet. You bet. Thank you, Brian, and ⁓ thank you, Producer Boston, and we will catch you guys next time. Thank you for joining us on another episode of The Source. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. For more information, please visit JorgensenFarms.com. And we will see you next time on another episode of The Source. speaker-0: Thanks guys.