Episode 157: Farmers of Life, for Life with Grant Breitkreutz

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Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast.

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You know the types of conversations that we have here, and if you don't, they're all about

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regenerating soil health, ecosystem health, the health of the plants and the livestock,

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the crops that we're growing, and ultimately having an impact on people's health and on public

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health. These are all important pieces that are integrally tied together. I'm very honored to

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have a conversation today with Grant Breitkreutz.

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Grant is someone whose work I've admired

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from a distance for a long time.

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I really enjoy the conversations that I have here

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on the podcast with scientists and with innovators.

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We have lots of fun conversations,

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but ultimately where the rubber really meets the road

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is in practice and having conversations with growers,

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reporting things into practice. And there is no replacement for depth of experience

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which Grant and his family and the people that he works with bring to the

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table in spades. So Grant, thank you for being here. I've really been looking

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forward to this conversation. Great, Aaron, a pleasure to be here, John.

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Can you tell us a little bit about your story, your

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background? What is, what's your farming context? What does your operation look

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like and how did you get to where you are today? Our farming operation started

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in 1997. It's kind of a unique story. My mom and dad, when they got married, they

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they made a commitment to each other at age 50 they would decide if they had made

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it farming or reassess life, reevaluate life in general.

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And to my amazement, at age 50, their decision was to quit farming.

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And I mean quit.

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My dad bought a truck, went coast to coast for a while, my mom had a job in town, and

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gave Donna and I the opportunity to buy them

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out and start farming here. So at that time we were, it was quite the step. You

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know, in farms you don't realize how you lean on older generations to help

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you with decisions. And when my dad was gone and he didn't have a cell phone,

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just there's nobody to back us up. So we made the decisions on our own.

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And honestly, it was a blessing, John.

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My wife was not from a farm, Dawn's not from a farm.

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When I met her, she didn't know how to run a riding lawnmower

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and she constantly asked, why, why are we doing this?

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Why are we doing this?

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She'd get done working a field and I'd say, well it looks pretty good, let's work it again. And she's like, why? You know, you're gonna get seed to soil

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contact here. So that really kept me questioning things and and obviously we

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were doing things what I would call the very conventional way in our

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neighborhood. It's what I was taught, what I learned, and eventually it wasn't

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working financially. And We were both working jobs

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off the farm and it's like we got to make this farm more profitable and try

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to get here full-time. And so we both really enjoyed the cattle side of it

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and just loved the cow-calf operation, the feedlot at the time. And so I started

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studying grazing management. I was blessed to meet Ian Mitchell Ennis in, uh, from South Africa.

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And, and even after meeting Ian, I didn't

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realize it was about soil health.

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We were still chasing production,

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production, production.

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And eventually the good Lord tapped us on the

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head and said it was about soil health.

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And so then we spent.

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Hopefully the tap was relatively soft.

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Yeah.

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Well, sometimes it was kind of harsh, but, um, and then, and then, you know, at that

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time, uh, you just couldn't find the information like you can now on, on media

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streams and all that type of stuff.

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And there weren't conferences locally. So we

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spent every winter we would run up to Burley County, North Dakota to see what Jay Feer and

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the crew was doing at the Minocan Farm to their annual conference. And learned a lot from that and

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experimented a lot here on the farm. And eventually our practices here on the farm with what I would call

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regenerative agriculture, more like farming for life, opened the doors to a

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lot of land opportunities. A lot of landowners saw what we were doing on our

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farm, saw the wildlife coming back, saw the reduced erosion, in reality,

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saw the life on the farm and started studying soil health

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and what it is and what it means.

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And we made a humongous expansion here.

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We quadrupled the size of this farm in less than three years.

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And at the same time had the opportunity

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to expand it a lot more than that,

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but we just knew the workload was gonna be too much.

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And so I was blessed to know enough people in the community

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that we got a lot of young farmers

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to take on the land that was offered to us

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and farm it the way we do or close to what we do.

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Wow, that's a fascinating story, Grant. So how, as you traveled to North

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Dakota to Burley County to those events, how did your operation

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shift and change? How is it different today from what it was in the 90s?

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We were a full tillage operation in the 90s. We did buy our first no-till drill

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and we still have it in 1998 because if I remember right the ground froze early

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that year and we didn't get tillage done. And so we've been no-tilling soybeans

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since 1998 and it's like wow we're just not burning all that fuel, crops are good,

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let's figure out

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how to no-till everything else. And so corn was the last crop we switched to

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no-till about 12 or 13 years ago. Operation... we actually were cover

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cropping before it was called cover crops. Like I said earlier, we were so

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so enthralled with our cattle and enjoyed the cattle side of it so much

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and with the limited land base we had had we're trying to expand the cow herd and

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couldn't ever get enough feed put up or enough grazing days. And so we were

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planting winter triticale after we cut corn silage and try to grow three crops

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in two years. And we got into extremely wet pattern. I'd have to go back and look at what

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year it was but it was it was in the late 90s or early 2000s and we had had

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two inches of rain throughout the night the Triticale was getting so tall it

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wasn't getting through our older cutting equipment and I told Dawn I said as soon

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as you get done with work I said you got to get on the swather and get this laid

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down or we're never gonna get get it harvested. And she got home early that day and went out there and never left the track.

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And I'm like, wait a minute, something happened here.

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Something is different with this soil.

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And, you know, six hours later, we were running with the cutters behind her,

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pulling big silage boxes and we never left the track.

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Wow.

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And it's, it's like, what happened here? And then I thought, you know, we just had

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two inches of rain. This might be crazy, but we own this no-till drill with a neighbor

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and he doesn't like to sleep at night. Let's put beans in that drill and plant these beans

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tonight yet. You know, and this is within 24 hours of a two inch rain and harvested

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46 bushel acre soybeans. And so the combination of learning what we learned on the

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grazing side of it, and then that particular experience, it's like there's something going

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on below our feet. We need to figure this out. And we need to try to manage it better than we

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currently are. So that's kind of how our evolution was. And since then, obviously,

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our operation grows more than just corn and soy

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and crops for cattle.

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What all are you growing today?

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We're still primarily corn and soybeans and I will admit that's because we still borrow

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a lot of money here and we've got to keep our crop insurance.

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That's part of that.

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But we do, Dawn and I, decide how many acres each year we want to leverage without insurance on, which most times is a very good decision. So we do grow a bunch

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of cereal rye here. We do grow some winter trit. We've done some field peas.

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We grow, right now I've been working on it for seven years. I grow seven grains all at one time. We

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plant wheat, oats, barley, peas, fava beans, lentils, and flax all at the same time.

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And we use the same percentage each year and harvest it as dry grain and this has

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turned into another huge market for us

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for chicken feed. We grind and mix the chicken feed here and I think right now

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we've got 26 customers. I know we've got a couple customers on the waiting list

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because like I say last year we were wet and part of our field drowned out so we

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didn't have any extra production. So what is the...

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Why are the chicken producers attracted to that mix?

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Are they particularly looking for the flax component, the omega-3 to 6 ratio

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nutrient density, or they're just... it's an inexpensive and effective feed source

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for them? Are they looking for quality?

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What are the motivators? That's exactly what happened. Two years ago in March

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in this upper Midwest region and I I'm not a conspiracy theorist but something

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happened to the local flocks, small flocks that were buying out of our

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fleet farm stores, where the chickens quit laying eggs and we had a couple

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landlords that we were providing feed to for their layer flocks and they had a network and they just said well Grant and Dawn's feed, our

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chickens haven't missed a beat laying eggs, maybe you should call them. And my

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phone just exploded. I mean we went from supplying two landlords chicken feed to

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all of a sudden we were to 15 to 16 customers. And what we're seeing is we've

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got some customers that don't want soy. And that's what that's what pushed us to

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this. For a while we had excess eggs and we had a customer that would buy our eggs

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as long as they did not contain soy. So that's why I put together this seven-way

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blend. And now most of the customers that are new to us now will say that our feed they

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get consistent egg lay rates. I mean we've got a small producer locally here

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that I think he's got about 18 to 20 some birds and they said that one day

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they'd harvest seven eggs the next day they'd have all 18. And since being on

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our feed now for six months, they're consistently

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pulling 15 to 18 eggs a day. I mean, you can call it the weather, you can call it whatever

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else, but that producer will say it's the consistency of the feed. And we don't add

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anything to this except for an organic vitamin pack. I still believe in that. I don't know

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if we could get by without it. And apple

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cider vinegar.

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Yeah, that's interesting. So what does this mix do for you agronomically? I mean, if you're

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growing a seven-way grain mix all in one combination, I'm assuming you're planting that in the spring

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and then harvesting later that year?

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Yeah, so it's going in early, like our wheat or oats would here. We plant it Yeah, so, yep, so it's going in early like our wheat or oats would here.

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We plant it early, basically, when we're thawed out here and can get through the fields.

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And then we can harvest usually the end of July.

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So besides the diversity in the seven grain mix, it gives us a great opportunity to put

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in 15, 18 species cover crop mix and still get a lot of growing days here in

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in Minnesota. I mean we you know we can potentially freeze the second week of

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September but that this way we get a lot of growth and we can produce a lot of

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forage for winter grazing and if we don't get to it don't need it for winter

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grazing just just do a tremendous amount of healing and building of soils with that type of length.

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And to be honest with you, John, I'll admit it, this has turned out to be one of our better

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cash crops.

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What we're charging for the feed is acceptable to the customer and it's a very good profit per acre situation.

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What role do livestock play in your operation presently?

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We've learned that livestock are key to our operation to build soil health.

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Besides that, the livestock is key for diversity. We just, we realize that diversity is key to fixing soils.

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We can't scientifically prove this,

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but I know when we pick up a new piece of ground

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that if we're given the good weather conditions,

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good growing environments,

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that we can speed up soil health metrics by about two years by walking the cows across it.

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Wow.

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There's, there's something that drops out of the back end of that cow that

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can't be duplicated in a lab.

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No way.

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No how.

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I mean, you, you watch a cow as she's walking across the land and the right

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sunlight, there's just a hue of biology life around that cow besides what's going in that great big

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fermentation vat inside of her and and that just stimulates the biology in the

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soil so much quicker than than any of the other products we can find that can

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do it. So we we we row crop about 1,200 acres here and our goal is to have those

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cows across to every acre every other year And we're doing really good at it. We've got one farm that we

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don't have fenced yet, but that's on the list to get done because we know how

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important getting those cows across that land is. When you think about the last 20-30

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years of experience, as you've learned from people,

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you were one of the pioneers, so you had to,

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you learned a lot from people

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that were outside of your region.

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And one of the things that we talk about constantly

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is the need to adapt that knowledge to your local context.

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What is it that you've,

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what were the adaptations that were required for you?

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What have you adapted?

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What's something that you learned

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that then had to be revised in order to fit?

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Oh, just about everything I learned out of my region.

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I was one of these go big or go home type producers

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in the 90s and it really hurt us

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because I didn't think about the adaptation

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process of how it was going to work in Minnesota, something I was learning in

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North Dakota or in Arkansas. So what we did learn and what I do encourage

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producers to do is try it in

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your environment with what you think is the right adapted practices and try it

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on a small scale. Don't go big and go home because it hurts the pocketbook. We

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as farmers need to try all these practices on our own operations. I've

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said this forever, we can have a list of

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parameters or regulations from the government or whatever. No two

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farms are ever going to look the same. We all have different management systems,

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we all have different environments, and we all react to those environments and

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changes differently as producers. So what we do now is, you know, like the seven grains I just tried it on

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ten acres and it's like wow, tremendous results. Now we're growing a lot of acres

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of it because we know what works here and it fits here. Just those type of

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things. Start small, but start. I mean for anybody that listens to this that thinks they want to

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go down this path, the one thing Dawn and I will tell everybody is we regret not

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finding this path earlier. I mean we were blessed to know David Brandt and to

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watch the experience of that man starting this in the 70s and to see

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what he built there in

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those soils, you know, I just wish we'd have started right away when we

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started farming. But that's everybody's experience. We got to get to it

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in our own time frame. When you are learning and when you're adapting

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things to your local context, you know, learning is never nonlinear. It's from an

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outside observer, it looks like a straight path from point A to point B, your local context. You know, learning is never nonlinear. It's, from an outside

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observer, it looks like a straight path from point A to point B, but for the

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people who are doing it, they know it's all kinds of twists and turns on that

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supposedly straight pathway. So what are some of the things

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that you've learned? What are some of the things that you would do differently if

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you were starting over? What are some of the things I would do differently if I was starting over? I would do more and more research. Even back at the time we

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did, I wish we'd have spent more time traveling to find more research so we

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had more confidence in what we were doing. And the other thing that I would, that Dawn and I talk about a lot is

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Grant and John can tell you to do one thing, find three other people, at least

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two other people that are saying the same thing that Grant and John are

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saying. So you got the validation that there are other people that have experienced this, know it

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works, and you're on the right path.

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I think that would be one of the biggest things I would have changed, is to just make sure

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I had more than one source telling me this was the path to go down. That's interesting. I just, I think about that in my own life a little bit.

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And I don't think anyone would suggest, nor would I suggest, that I haven't done enough

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research because that's one thing that I tend to really thrive at.

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But you know, I don't know, thinking about your second point a little bit,

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there are many cases where the pioneers have no peers.

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Like if you really are on the cutting edge, you're doing things that you may not be able to find

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two or three other people who have had similar experiences.

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How do you approach that?

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Well, on our operation here,

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if we couldn't find anybody with experience on that, is we tried it

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two or three or four years in a row to see if our thought process, our ideas were going to work.

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And I would say nine times out of ten, they did. But you got to realize we're in agriculture and

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we're, mother nature controls what we do out here. We can do everything we can

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to make something succeed, or as human beings we can make anything fail also.

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But Mother Nature is still in control, so when we try something we want to try it

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at least three to four years to make sure that we're correct, and then we'll

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expand on it. I mean some things are are just a given. Yeah, just go

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ahead and do it. But like the seven grains, I mean, we slowly expanded it. I mean, in

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our, in our livestock operation, you know, what stocking rates are right, what are wrong.

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We've learned there's no correct stocking rate. There's lots of people out there that

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can tell you what they think is right, and it's

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not.

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It's all our management decisions.

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But the one key thing is, is I'm not tech savvy.

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I know I could do all this on my phone, but we still do it all on paper.

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As we record everything, especially on the livestock side of it, hey, did we overgraze

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this?

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What was the weather conditions when we overgrazed it? And now with all that information back there we can tell you this year and next

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year where the most productive pastures are going to be by our past history. And

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that's something that takes a long time to get your head wrapped around. We had a

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group of producers here the other day and they said what how come

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that how come this pastures got dandelions in it and how come this one

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doesn't and I said I can tell you straight out I said we can go up to the

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office look in the books and I can tell you that that was overgrazed sometime in

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the last two years you know it was a sacrifice paddock there was a reason

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that it was overgrazed and and overgrazing happens and it does in

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our environment because it's something we have to do to keep these cows out of

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the feedlot. But we've got that written down and we know it so we got to give it

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longer rest and recovery periods. I mean it I guess it all comes back to I've got

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I've got a great memory of things but if we don't have that type

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of memory locked in our head we have to get it on paper or some kind of recorded

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device to know the history of what happened there and that will predict the

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future. I remember, I don't remember where this quote originated but it was at a

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fairly young age it might have been with my mother she She repeated it quite frequently, if I recall correctly.

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The poorest ink is better than the best memory.

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Exactly, because the ink doesn't lie.

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The ink can always be referenced back to.

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Yeah. Yeah. So.

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When there's this recurring conversation that I often have with growers who are,

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who want to go down a different pathway and who want to,

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and there's this common request of,

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what are the most influential changes that I can make?

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Where are the leverage points that can make points that can have the most significant impact

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on improving an operation? I think there are a few pieces that are getting to be very commonly

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recognized, the impact of cover crops and where possible the impact of livestock. But

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I'd like to ask that question of you for your operation when you look at the modifications,

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the changes you've made over time.

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Where were the leverage points where a change produced an outsized impact that was larger

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than you expected?

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Well, like I said, we're in corn soybean country here, and I guess the one big thing on corn

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for me was nitrogen

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management. It boggles my mind why or how the foreign producer in America

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listens to their input supplier, who's taking the money out of their pocket as

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to how to apply nitrogen. And I was

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blessed by my father who, and my grandfather, who I don't think they

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studied nitrogen management, but they knew that split applications in nitrogen

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were key to growing a great corn crop on very little nitrogen. And it's just

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amazing when we change nitrogen management, how we change weed pressures,

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how we change all these other things that we fight in a growing season. There's so much to that question

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you asked, John. I just... but that's the one that popped to my mind immediately

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that's specific to my area here, but corn's growing all across the country. As

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we start changing these managements, like I said before,

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you have to watch what else changes also.

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Yeah.

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So you've said this a lot in your podcast over the years

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is nutrient management is so key

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and it affects everything else in the ecosystem

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we're farming in and where we're trying to grow a crop in.

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And I guess that's the one that just popped to my mind right away was nitrogen management.

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I watch what the neighbors do and I watch them fight waterhemp nonstop.

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And it's like, you know, the waterhemp is one of the least of my concerns because of

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cover crop and nitrogen management.

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Well, you know, Grant, in spite of me being here on the podcast and the amazing work that

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our team does all the time, we still have.

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I got I received a message yesterday from a grower who has been loosely working with

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our consulting team for the last four years, and he's.

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This year, for the first time he decided,

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okay, I'm going all in, I'm going to take

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these recommendations, I'm going to apply them

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as I'm being advised to.

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And he sent me this message, he said,

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okay, I get it, I really get it.

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For the first time, I'm seeing the degree

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of plant health and response that you've always

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talked about, that I've never gotten up to this point.

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And it's because he was putting his toe in the water.

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And there are some things that you just, there are some things that have a compounding effect

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and nutrition management is one of them.

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So let's talk a bit about nitrogen management.

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What are you doing exactly?

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How is it different?

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What are the benefits that you've observed relative to the way other the common management practices are?

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So I'll answer that question this way John is we don't know what we're doing

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We honestly don't we're trying so many different things

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But the one thing that Don and I have always done is a minimum of three nitrogen applications on a corn crop. We'll apply some of that plant, we'll

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spoon feed a little bit at V2, V3, and we'll come in and spoon feed some later.

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That's how we started out doing this. And I have made the decision in the

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economy, in the economic times we're in this year, we are gonna make no less than

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six applications of nitrogen on the corn crop this year. And Dawn is, she's really

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honestly not happy with me about my decision because she knows I'm gonna be

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living in a sprayer to do all these applications. But when you look at the

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dollars and cents of it, that is gonna, that's gonna pay my entire year's wages

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by nitrogen management.

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I mean, we're melting urea and we're using,

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we're using humics and fulvics.

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I mean, we've realized it's not just about N, P and K anymore

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and I'll be honest with you, John,

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I told Russell Hedrick this three years ago, probably four years ago.

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Russell and I got split apart during COVID, and we got back together at a

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conference, and we're sitting there eating a steak one night, and I told

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Russell, I said, man, I'm really angry with you. I hate you. And he's

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like, why are you saying that, Grant? We get along great. And I said, because I did

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not like school. And I said, with everything that you've learned on your farm, with the

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research you've done there, I have to go back to school. And I don't want to go

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back to school. And to be honest with you John, I have made a commitment

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that I try to spend three to four hours every day through the winter studying

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anything. And I don't care if it's coming off of your podcast

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or somebody else's podcast, or if I'm looking things up on the computer, I think we in agriculture,

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as farmers, we've become chemologists. And we were pushed that way by farm bill, by input suppliers, everything else. We as farmers have to become biologists again. Our forefathers did not grow just corn and

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soybeans. They had a rotation. Did they know why they were doing it? Some of them

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yes, some of them no. But it was about the biology happening in the soil by

368
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growing different crops. And we've just gone down a really nasty path and

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your group is one I go to all the time to listen to and

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search out knowledge. I mean, there's lots of other paths that people can find this and

371
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try to learn it as a farmer and apply it back to their farms.

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You know, many professions, well, I say practically everyone, benefits from having advisors.

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And so, farmers have for a long time thought of co-op agronomists as being on their team.

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They're on their, they're one of their advisors that are on their team, like their vet and other advisors, but you know, I think, I don't know if farming is unique in this,

375
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but one of the things that stands out to me is that we, in no other profession that I'm aware of,

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do people delegate knowledge to their advisors to the same degree that farmers do, or have done in

377
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the recent past, I mean the farmers that I observed.

378
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The one characteristic that I've observed are the most successful farms, the most innovative,

379
00:29:11,700 --> 00:29:17,420
the growers who are exceptionally profitable and who are really making, they do not delegate

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00:29:17,420 --> 00:29:18,420
knowledge.

381
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And what I mean by that is they want to understand it for themselves.

382
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So they certainly, they have advisors, they have people that they're learning from.

383
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But then they say, hang on, I'm not just going to follow your recommendations just because Mr. Genius, smart guy, said so.

384
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I want to understand why did he make that recommendation.

385
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Why are we doing this now?

386
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And farmers for a long time have delegated the understanding of the why, or have been satisfied

387
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with superficial answers.

388
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I agree 100% with what you just said, John.

389
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And I had to do some research on this on a presentation I gave some years ago.

390
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Why do we as producers, and why, I guess the research I did as, as ag

391
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producers, 85 to 90% of our input decisions are based on the co-op.

392
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That's taken the money out of our product, out of our pocket.

393
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,380
Why that, that, that just, when you say this to somebody outside of

394
00:30:21,380 --> 00:30:23,420
agriculture, they're like, why would you listen to somebody that's

395
00:30:23,420 --> 00:30:24,640
taking the money out of your pocket?

396
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And, and the one thing, it was the advice and we, we still have to get

397
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product from our local co-ops.

398
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And I go in there and I say, I want, you know, 5,000 pounds of urea in each

399
00:30:39,700 --> 00:30:41,700
hopper, dump it in these two tanks.

400
00:30:41,700 --> 00:30:42,860
And they're like, what are you doing?

401
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:47,480
I was like, I'm melting urea. And the head agronomist just gives you a blank look.

402
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:57,000
Our co-ops maybe don't have the knowledge

403
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:02,000
that we think we trust they have as producers.

404
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:07,680
And to me, that's extremely disappointing, but that's

405
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:11,280
where we, as an American farmer, got to take this back into our hand.

406
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,840
Just like you said, we, we have to have the knowledge we have to find.

407
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:20,280
John and his advisory team or other advisory teams that, that have this

408
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:25,680
knowledge and the one thing that I wanted to say in this podcast so far,

409
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:31,480
John, is the farther and farther I go down this road, the less and less I know.

410
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:40,960
It's scary. The less and less I know, but yet I can see the, I can see everything

411
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:46,720
changing for the better. From our bottom line to the environment to

412
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:52,960
our neighborhood and community. And I don't think we're ever going to get to a

413
00:31:52,960 --> 00:32:00,000
point in time where we as human beings understand what God gave us here. Yes, I

414
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:05,540
understand the amount of studying you do, John, but you're still learning every day. Oh my goodness, yeah.

415
00:32:05,540 --> 00:32:09,200
And I don't know as a human race

416
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,620
that we'll ever figure out what God gave us here to manage.

417
00:32:12,620 --> 00:32:14,340
But the closer we can manage it

418
00:32:14,340 --> 00:32:17,140
to the way it was before we got here,

419
00:32:17,140 --> 00:32:19,940
to me and Dawn, the easier the system works.

420
00:32:19,940 --> 00:32:24,400
And it's much more fun to manage in that environment.

421
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,140
Instead of looking every morning at what we gotta go out

422
00:32:29,140 --> 00:32:32,560
and kill and take care of, managing for life

423
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:34,780
and what we can grow is so much more fun.

424
00:32:36,540 --> 00:32:38,040
It put fun back into farming.

425
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:57,660
I think you're spot on about your assessment of we're never going to know everything there is to know none of us ever is a never is there is it's just not that's not the way it's going to work however.

426
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I'm also really inspired by the idea that it's not really necessary to know everything,

427
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:08,680
because it was designed to work.

428
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:09,880
It was designed to work.

429
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:17,240
And when you can, when you understand the foundational principles of working with life,

430
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:23,480
as you described it, and you seek to enhance life rather than to kill it, then you unleash

431
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:24,480
it.

432
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:25,760
You allow it to express itself

433
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:27,100
rather than constantly suppressing it.

434
00:33:27,100 --> 00:33:29,500
And then amazing things begin to happen.

435
00:33:29,500 --> 00:33:32,160
And you mentioned something a bit ago

436
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:35,080
on nitrogen management related to weed pressure.

437
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:39,040
You know, often as we go down this pathway,

438
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:42,640
we observe things that, oh, dandelion pressure is a result

439
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:48,160
or dandelion expression is a result of overgrazing, weed pressure is a result of nitrogen management, and we make these

440
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:54,400
associations that we made change A and we observed all these various outcomes

441
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:59,200
B, C, D, E, F and as time goes by and we gain experience and we have the benefit of

442
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:03,720
deeper perspective all of a sudden we get to a point where oh I did this and

443
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:07,240
it had this domino effect and five years later that happened.

444
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:08,920
And that just blows people's minds

445
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:09,960
who are unfamiliar with this.

446
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:12,240
It's like, you're saying that?

447
00:34:12,240 --> 00:34:15,200
But that's so far, Z is so far removed from A,

448
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:17,360
how can you say A caused Z?

449
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:19,480
But if you've watched that pattern repeat itself

450
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:20,320
multiple times, it's like,

451
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:28,080
no, no, those two things are connected. And that's an incredible experience. Mike McDonald It is absolutely an incredible experience.

452
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:34,880
And I'll admit this, on my farming operation, when Dawn and I started, there was a new agronomist

453
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:42,560
that must have paid attention to soils class in college. And I said, I said, I want to do a full

454
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:50,600
soil testing program. I said, I want to do things right. And he looked at me and he said are the cows leaving the farm

455
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:56,460
anytime soon Grant? And I said no. He said don't bother soil testing. Just floored

456
00:34:56,460 --> 00:35:01,900
me. This is an agronomist that told me this. Don't bother soil testing. So on our

457
00:35:01,900 --> 00:35:05,520
operation I feel horrible about this. We've got no real

458
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:12,200
baselines. We do have some soil tests here from 1996 or 1998 I believe. That's

459
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:17,840
the only soil tests I have from back when we started. So I mentored a producer

460
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:22,680
up the river here from me and I told him, I said, Phil, I said, you have got to

461
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:25,080
baseline everything. All the tests that

462
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:29,480
are out there right now, please baseline this. You don't have livestock, you're

463
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:35,880
corn soybean producer, so your data is going to be key to what happens here. And

464
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:42,040
that data set, John, is just amazing. Seven years into it, organic matter

465
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:46,080
climate is just constant. All the other parameters

466
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:50,080
that we know how to measure now are all there and all documented. Something I

467
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:55,200
can't show on my farm because we didn't do it. But now on these new farms that

468
00:35:55,200 --> 00:36:01,300
were that were taken on, we're baselining everything and then monitoring the

469
00:36:01,300 --> 00:36:05,720
increase in everything. Like you say, it's other than the tests, there's so

470
00:36:05,720 --> 00:36:11,040
much more that we got to monitor visually as farmers. Just look at

471
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,840
what happens to the wildlife in that neighborhood as you make these changes.

472
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:19,400
And every producer I've ever talked to that's five to seven years into this

473
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:23,980
will notice those environmental changes also.

474
00:36:23,980 --> 00:36:25,160
Yeah.

475
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:28,080
So I want to talk a bit about some of the farmers

476
00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:29,760
and producers that you've been mentoring

477
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:30,880
and the people that you're working with.

478
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:34,120
But sometimes I get a little bit like a dog with a bone.

479
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:36,000
I don't want to lose sight of something.

480
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,440
And I wanted to come back to your point

481
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:42,700
about nitrogen management and weed pressure.

482
00:36:42,700 --> 00:36:44,800
With your split applications,

483
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:45,680
and you're now doing six

484
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:49,000
applications, you said this summer, so I'm assuming, well you did say the sprayer,

485
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,640
so that means a lot of foliar applications. What changes in weed

486
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:56,200
pressure have you observed as a result of changing nitrogen management? How do

487
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:58,000
you think those two things correlate?

488
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,000
The biggest one in our area here is waterhemp.

489
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:07,760
And that species of weed is with a growing

490
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:11,880
cover crop, because I need to admit this, we do plant most of our crops into

491
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:16,200
into green living cover crops. So obviously we get the effect of that rye

492
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:22,600
or shiitake kale as a cover on the soil. But even in areas where we don't

493
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:26,100
get a cover crop seeded, we don't fight the

494
00:37:26,100 --> 00:37:34,040
waterhemp pressure because of the nutrient applications. And the reason I

495
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,520
can say that is because we've been pushed into a corner at times where we

496
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,340
had to front load a lot of nitrogen because we knew we weren't going to get

497
00:37:41,340 --> 00:37:47,640
it done. We were short on labor. We didn't have the equipment. And in those situations we fight waterhemp or

498
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:56,160
lambsquarter or pigweed. We fight them and when we split this up we

499
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:00,640
don't fight it. And the other thing I'll say John is I mentor a lot of people

500
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:08,300
here locally. And in fact one of them's working for me now. And he farms his own land. And he made the comment to me yesterday. He said, Grant,

501
00:38:08,300 --> 00:38:12,800
he says, I got a spray. He says, I got water hemp horribly. And yet he's here with me

502
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,600
riding in my wheeler, scouting fields here. And he's like, how come you don't

503
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:30,160
have it? And I said, don't you think that 140 pounds of nitrogen applied before you planted might have something to do with it." And he just looked at me and he said, it can't be tied together. I said, it is. I said, it's tied

504
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:36,160
together. And he just kind of gave me a blank look and he says, well, he says, I would not believe

505
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:45,040
you at all, but I'd see it on your farm. And our farms are not that far apart, there's a difference.

506
00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:50,960
Yeah, so what does, in an ideal scenario, well this year you're now going to

507
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:54,800
kind of another level, but what has your nitrogen split

508
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,560
look like historically? How much at planting versus how much later?

509
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:02,960
40 units of nitrogen put on with the planter,

510
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:07,960
and then we'll try to get between 60 and 80

511
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:12,920
more units on in the growing season. What we found here in our soils that are

512
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:17,520
really functioning well, and I can't prove this scientifically John,

513
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:27,440
and I wish somebody could, but it looks to me like we kind of shoot for six tenths of a unit of

514
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:35,720
nitrogen per bushel. It seems to be ideal. We've done 250 plus bushel corn on

515
00:39:35,720 --> 00:39:41,080
four tenths of a unit of nitrogen. It seems to me that we might be burning

516
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:49,300
some organic matter then. It seems like that crop might be pulling hard on our soils harder than I'd like to see. So that's that's kind of

517
00:39:49,300 --> 00:39:55,360
our ideal goal is is six-tenths of a unit of nitrogen per bushel of corn.

518
00:39:55,360 --> 00:40:00,080
I will say we've we farmed some land along the river here that's that's not

519
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:06,220
going to be 250 bushel corn. I mean, maybe someday it will be. So that's not our yield goal.

520
00:40:06,220 --> 00:40:09,900
So we strive for 175 bushel yield gold here

521
00:40:09,900 --> 00:40:12,260
because we know we have marginal soils,

522
00:40:12,260 --> 00:40:16,140
but 250 has happened, you know,

523
00:40:16,140 --> 00:40:18,140
but that comes back to the environment.

524
00:40:18,980 --> 00:40:23,620
I guess our goal here is we don't have a specialty

525
00:40:23,620 --> 00:40:26,200
and market for our corn yet. We grow all

526
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:31,840
conventional corn, non-GMO corn. Our goal here as an operation is to produce it as

527
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:37,200
cheap or cheaper than our neighbors so we are profitable at $4 corn. We don't

528
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:42,440
we don't have to produce 250 bushel corn to make a profit if we watch our inputs

529
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:52,100
going in on the front side. I'd love to open that profitability can of worms, but it's, uh, the reality is anyone

530
00:40:52,100 --> 00:40:54,880
who pays attention probably knows what that story looks like.

531
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:56,880
Profitability versus yield.

532
00:40:56,880 --> 00:41:06,640
I'll say this, John, though, that that production cost per bushel should be a driver of an operation though.

533
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:10,320
It's what got Don and I to where we are. You know, there's a gentleman in North

534
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:15,040
Dakota some years ago told me he was growing corn for $1.47 a bushel. I told

535
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:20,360
him he was wrong and he can't do it for that. And I strived for five years to

536
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:26,320
grow corn for $1.47 a bushel. I can't do it. But I experimented

537
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:30,800
with everything I possibly could to do that and the big difference between here

538
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:35,520
and Burley County, North Dakota is our land cost. I'll never be able to grow

539
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:39,640
corn that cheap because our land cost is so much higher. But I did eliminate

540
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:46,720
everything else that I could on the input side of it to get my cost down to $2.25 in that particular

541
00:41:46,720 --> 00:41:48,760
year.

542
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:52,080
So it pushed us to profitability.

543
00:41:52,080 --> 00:42:03,240
Yeah, well, even at $2.25, much less at $1.47, the reality is looking at the economic landscape

544
00:42:03,240 --> 00:42:06,240
at the moment, right as we're having this conversation, I

545
00:42:06,240 --> 00:42:10,000
know a lot of growers who haven't made money in the last two years and it's looking even

546
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,240
less promising this year.

547
00:42:13,240 --> 00:42:15,320
And that isn't sustainable for very long.

548
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:19,680
You're consuming your equity and at some point there's no equity left to consume.

549
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:25,720
And I just, our ag lending institutions out here in rural America are getting

550
00:42:25,720 --> 00:42:29,600
nervous. I mean, yeah, we had a lot of profitability in farming, but like you

551
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:34,600
say, John, we're burning through equity. And my banker, when I sat down with him,

552
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:40,160
he's like, well, what's your seed cost? Well, we're planting the cheapest

553
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:44,240
conventional corn we can find here, so it's 56 bucks an acre. We don't need the

554
00:42:44,240 --> 00:42:48,760
traits because we broke those pest cycles. So our seed cost is cheap." And he

555
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,280
says, well what's your fertility program? And I said, well it's gonna be between

556
00:42:51,280 --> 00:42:57,140
90 and 120 dollars an acre. And he's like, no what what's your fertility cost? Not

557
00:42:57,140 --> 00:43:03,440
your seed cost. I'm like, that's my fertility cost. And you know at the end

558
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:06,160
of the conversation he's like, well it looks

559
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:09,160
like you're gonna make money again this year. He said this is the first one I've

560
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:13,360
seen all year. He said most of the producers coming through here can't even

561
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:17,200
cover their living expenses. They're gonna be living off of equity.

562
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:22,880
Yeah, it's a sad state of affairs and there's a whole number of, a whole

563
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,320
array of contributing factors that have led us to that

564
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:31,720
spot but the farmers are being farmed and also they're voluntarily signing up for it.

565
00:43:31,720 --> 00:43:34,840
They bear some responsibility as well.

566
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:35,840
Absolutely.

567
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:42,400
We have got to take our farms back into our own hands.

568
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:50,000
It's amazing to me in the last 75 years how we've been led down this path, like you mentioned, John, and there's so many influences and it's unbelievable.

569
00:43:50,000 --> 00:44:10,080
Yeah. So when you consider that landscape and when you can think about how people change, I wanted to get to this conversation of you've mentioned how you've learned from other people. At one point you had to travel some distance to learn from others who were going down this pathway. And now you're mentoring a lot of other people.

570
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:16,060
What do the community dynamics look like from your perspective? How are growers shifting

571
00:44:16,060 --> 00:44:18,060
and changing?

572
00:44:18,060 --> 00:44:26,040
It's, uh, to the outside community, outside of agriculture, the farmers and producers

573
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:30,720
aren't changing fast enough. I get that question a lot. How come, how come the

574
00:44:30,720 --> 00:44:33,640
rest of your neighbors aren't changing? They're not changing fast enough. Well,

575
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:40,500
that's, that's reality. And when you look at it, and I don't, I don't mean to say

576
00:44:40,500 --> 00:44:43,680
this in a bad way, but when you look at what Dawn and I have done, you're

577
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:47,400
admitting two things, and two of those things are some of the hardest things that you can do as a

578
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:52,780
human being in a way you're admitting you're wrong and you're, and you're

579
00:44:52,780 --> 00:44:56,160
changing. That's, that's two of the hardest things for human being to do.

580
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:01,120
So, so that part is hard and that, that stops a lot of people.

581
00:45:02,580 --> 00:45:05,560
Now dynamics in our local community here, there's more

582
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:11,440
and more people changing. And it's not fast change and it's

583
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:16,160
pushed by many different things. It's pushed by mentoring, it's pushed by here

584
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:19,280
in Minnesota. We got the Minnesota Soil Health Coalition that spends a lot of

585
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:26,440
time on the ground putting on field, exposing producers to this way of farming. There's

586
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:31,960
a lot of one-on-one personal mentoring like you mentioned. There's a lot of, I

587
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:36,320
gotta say it, but there's a lot of government programs that are cautioning

588
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:42,000
to help make this change. But for an individual to make the change, it's right

589
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,480
here, it's between the ears, it's all has to be the change it's right here it's between the ears it's it's all

590
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:48,560
Has to be the human

591
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:56,020
Change is going to happen as I mentioned this before as humans we can make anything

592
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:02,360
Successful and we can make anything fail so if a producer plants a cover crop and

593
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:10,020
Doesn't manage it with the idea that it's going to work, it will be a failure or it will be a problem in their operation, in their management

594
00:46:10,020 --> 00:46:14,520
system. So the first thing as a producer we got to decide, hey this this rye

595
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:17,080
cover crop is going to work. It's going to be the greatest thing since sliced

596
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:20,080
bread and it's going to add to our profitability. If we don't go into it

597
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:26,300
with that attitude, it's more than likely going to be a failure and never be used as a tool again.

598
00:46:26,300 --> 00:46:32,360
And so with all of this, it's got to be, we got to manage it as successful as we can to

599
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:38,000
make it a plus on all sides.

600
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:53,000
You know, when you think about the two major changes that are the two big acknowledgments, as you pointed out, that I was wrong and making a change and how difficult those are for people.

601
00:46:53,000 --> 00:47:05,960
They're difficult on several levels. They're difficult on a very personal level of just admitting those things to yourself, admitting that you the social pressure that comes with that and the community pressure.

602
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:11,260
What are people going to say at local restaurant and the bar and church and wherever else you

603
00:47:11,260 --> 00:47:13,520
interact with people?

604
00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:20,260
And then there is the possible counter of that, that people have frequently brought

605
00:47:20,260 --> 00:47:29,040
up here in conversations is the need to surround yourself with a community that supports you and that is aligned with you to balance some of that.

606
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:34,200
What are, you mentioned the Minnesota Soil Health Coalition, how is that community structure

607
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:38,840
being developed and how are people, how is that helpful in facilitating change?

608
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:44,280
Well, like I say, we watch South Dakota do what they did with their coalition.

609
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:49,920
Just watch it blow up from zero to three years to just about 500 members.

610
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:53,360
And we're close to South Dakota, so we'd run over there for every event they had and just

611
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:59,040
saw the programming was great, exposing producers to what they need to be exposed to.

612
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,920
And so we got to go in here, Minnesota, and from zero to five years, we took this thing

613
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:05,840
from zero to a thousand plus members.

614
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:06,540
Wow.

615
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:12,440
I mean, that's something you don't see in egg programming.

616
00:48:12,500 --> 00:48:17,200
I don't think ever to go from nothing to a thousand plus members.

617
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:29,960
The, the big thing with the coalition is it addresses all levels of a producer wanting to change. From the

618
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:33,960
baby footsteps of just planting the first cover crop or reducing that deep

619
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:41,320
tillage pass, the most aggressive pass, to the full-on schools. I mean they've

620
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:51,080
done a school for I think this is the fourth year of trying to get the producer deeper, fuller knowledge of what's happening in these

621
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:57,920
systems. You know we brought in a lot of a lot of very knowledgeable

622
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:03,360
instructors to try to dive deep into this to help the producers change. On the

623
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,680
local level we've been pushed,

624
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:10,440
and Dawn and I were pushed by a local producer

625
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,280
who we've mentored for seven years.

626
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:15,600
This man came to my office years ago,

627
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:17,940
we were a member of a small community church.

628
00:49:17,940 --> 00:49:19,700
We ran out of people for our church.

629
00:49:19,700 --> 00:49:21,440
We had to close the church.

630
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:23,360
Unusual, we didn't run out of money first,

631
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:24,820
but we ran out of people.

632
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:30,680
And he called me and he says, you and Dawn will be home at one o'clock today. And I'm

633
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:36,020
like, what's going on? I thought we had everything settled with the church. And no, he says,

634
00:49:36,020 --> 00:49:39,600
you will be home at one o'clock today. I was like, yeah, I guess we'll be here. And he

635
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:47,380
comes into the office with tears in his eyes and he says, it's not working. I listened to you and you and Bob talk about this for 23 years in the back of

636
00:49:47,380 --> 00:49:50,140
this church, you got to help my operation.

637
00:49:51,240 --> 00:49:55,940
And so that, that producer, after seven years of mentoring as his

638
00:49:55,940 --> 00:49:57,900
profitability is just incredible.

639
00:49:58,620 --> 00:50:03,580
Uh, his nitrogen savings is, well, he's cut his nitrogen usage in half and still

640
00:50:03,580 --> 00:50:08,280
producing the same or better crop, you know, just the dollars in his pocket. So he's like, we got to share

641
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:14,480
this with the local community. We got to start a local group. So I said, I'll

642
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:19,080
supply the office. I don't have time to help with this other than to host the

643
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:23,160
meeting. Don volunteered to take care of the clerical end of it, sending out

644
00:50:23,160 --> 00:50:28,680
emails, that type of stuff. So two years ago in February we started a group here there

645
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:32,280
were six people at the first meeting, nine people at the second meeting. This

646
00:50:32,280 --> 00:50:37,600
second year of existence of what we call the local soil health assembly has no

647
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:46,680
less than 22 to 26 farms at it every other week for a two-hour meeting. Now think about this John. We

648
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:51,240
have a two-hour meeting and why we do two hours is specific. We got a

649
00:50:51,240 --> 00:50:55,520
lot of young producers in here. They got young families, which to my amazement is

650
00:50:55,520 --> 00:51:01,500
just makes my heart full to see this many young producers here. We got people

651
00:51:01,500 --> 00:51:04,420
with livestock so they know when they can get home to do chores or how to

652
00:51:04,420 --> 00:51:08,580
balance their schedule. And what we found is this is key is putting

653
00:51:08,580 --> 00:51:12,880
together these local assemblies or groups, however you do it, time restrictions have to

654
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:17,840
be in place. As farmers we all like to do side talk and whoever leads these

655
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:21,140
meetings has got to stop the side talk and we got to stay focused on what we're

656
00:51:21,140 --> 00:51:29,200
doing. And as we've gone through these meetings, imagine this John, in this group there's between 25 and 30,000

657
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:34,800
acres represented. And one of the youngest guys in this group, his plea to

658
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:38,640
this group as we're getting ready to go to planting season this year was please

659
00:51:38,640 --> 00:51:44,280
go to your home farms and experiment with one thing or two things. We don't

660
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:45,600
need university data on

661
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:51,320
this. If you got a yield monitor, do it. Grain cart, whatever. Do it. So can you

662
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:56,400
imagine what it's going to be like in November, December this year when you've

663
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:02,120
got 25,000 acres of farms doing experimentation? And I know some of them

664
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:05,220
are doing it with your products, with other products that are on the market.

665
00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:08,560
It's gonna take us all winter to get through this.

666
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,840
And think about the compound of learning. Now instead of a

667
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:21,000
producer or farmer learning from one farm, he's learning from 20, it's going to accelerate learning by 25 to 30x.

668
00:52:21,640 --> 00:52:25,760
Right, we only get 40-45 chances to do this in a lifetime and for

669
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:30,400
these young producers can you imagine what's going through their minds? That

670
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:34,740
they're so excited to get through this growing season to get to this winter to

671
00:52:34,740 --> 00:52:38,980
be able to improve their profitability. And that's what we need is we've got to

672
00:52:38,980 --> 00:52:44,040
keep these young producers here. And I want to say this too the one thing that

673
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:45,820
Dawn and I will say all the

674
00:52:45,820 --> 00:52:50,680
time is as we started down this path and we started meeting other producers,

675
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:55,980
doing the things we are, it's not the cutthroat, stab you in the back

676
00:52:55,980 --> 00:53:02,220
conversations or mentality anymore. There are producers sitting in this

677
00:53:02,220 --> 00:53:10,320
room that I could go to their landlord and say, hey, I want to rent your land. That's never going to happen. We're so focused on trying

678
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:16,240
to make each other's farms profitable, more profitable, so we don't have to have land

679
00:53:16,240 --> 00:53:51,680
expansion, so we don't have to farm the world and never get home to our families. Well, one of my contentions has been that this thing that we're calling regenerative

680
00:53:51,680 --> 00:53:58,880
agriculture, I think is, is designed to prevail in the long term for the very simple reason

681
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:04,280
that it allows people when it's done well, it allows people to become the low cost producer,

682
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:09,360
which is another way of saying the profitable producers and the people who are going

683
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:13,280
to survive in the long term are going to be the people who figure it out and to

684
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:18,600
figure out how to be profitable even in the high-priced input environment.

685
00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:26,920
But you mentioned pure pressure, John. I don't think anybody from the outside looking at agriculture

686
00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:33,120
understands the amount of peer pressure in agriculture. It is... why are we the, you

687
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:38,280
know, why do we have the highest suicide rate of any occupation in the world? It's

688
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:42,680
because of peer pressure. It's because the pressure that's put on us to grow a

689
00:54:42,680 --> 00:54:45,720
big crop and do it this, be the crop and do it this be the best in the neighborhood be the

690
00:54:45,720 --> 00:54:48,280
Best in the community have the nicest looking crops all that

691
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:51,960
That pressure is real

692
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:54,000
But if we can get back to profitability

693
00:54:55,640 --> 00:55:06,240
That takes that pressure off and I'll say this dawn and I we had to grow some pretty thick skin. You know, there was a lot of

694
00:55:06,240 --> 00:55:10,520
things said, a lot of phone calls made to us that said, you can't do this. A lot of

695
00:55:10,520 --> 00:55:13,280
our input suppliers said, well, you're just trying to run us out of business.

696
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:19,040
It's like, no, we're not. We're trying to keep ourselves in business. And if

697
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:25,280
you think I'm trying to run you out of business, well, you're a service provider, provide the services I need to make these changes.

698
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:29,520
This is, it can all work together,

699
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:33,920
and it needs to for our communities in rural America.

700
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:34,900
Yeah, exactly.

701
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,380
That's a wonderful ending note, Grant.

702
00:55:38,380 --> 00:55:40,800
I wanna say thank you for everything that you've contributed.

703
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:42,920
I'd like to ask you one last question.

704
00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:49,100
What is a point of view that you hold that is very

705
00:55:49,100 --> 00:55:55,940
different from your peers? People who are in the same space, who are also aligned with

706
00:55:55,940 --> 00:55:59,820
regenerative agriculture, what is something that you believe to be true that is perhaps

707
00:55:59,820 --> 00:56:08,600
different from the common view. I guess you you brought it up already. Dawn and I

708
00:56:08,600 --> 00:56:13,840
have had big discussions about this. We're afraid of the term regenerative.

709
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:18,280
We're absolutely definitely afraid of the term regenerative to the point where

710
00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:24,320
my, where Dawn is a beautiful gifted writer and she can put things in words

711
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:26,020
and she said our motto

712
00:56:26,020 --> 00:56:29,780
on our farm is not going to be regenerative it's going to be farmers of

713
00:56:29,780 --> 00:56:36,380
life for life and a lot of that comes from dr. Jonathan Lundgren has become a

714
00:56:36,380 --> 00:56:40,760
good friend of ours you know he talks about the whole carbon situation and he

715
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:44,000
says I hope in five years we're done talking about carbon because it's

716
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:52,200
simply because it simply comes back to the fact that carbon is directly associated with life. So that's

717
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:57,320
why Don came up with that model for our farm. And that's what we're going to run with.

718
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:04,640
Well, I'd like that phrase, but I'd like to better understand why the reservations

719
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:05,200
around the

720
00:57:05,200 --> 00:57:06,200
term regenerative.

721
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:12,280
We're seeing it with sustainability, John.

722
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:16,160
You know, companies run with sustainability as their logo.

723
00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:19,720
I'm afraid companies are going to run with regenerative as their logo.

724
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:24,200
I hope that it is for the betterment and for the good.

725
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:25,200
It's not greenwashing.

726
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:28,720
Um, that, that, that's why we're tentative about it.

727
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:32,840
It seems like all the terms in agriculture get, get used as a

728
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:34,560
marketing tool in some way or another.

729
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:38,960
And I really, and I really, I really hope that it gets used in a

730
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:42,440
positive and good, good purpose.

731
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:43,040
Yeah.

732
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:43,760
Good.

733
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:48,000
Well, thank you, Grant. I'm glad I asked that last question. Thank you for being

734
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:50,000
here. Thank you for all the work that you're doing, all the

735
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:52,000
support that you're offering to so many people

736
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:54,000
and I look forward

737
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:56,000
to chatting with you again soon.

738
00:57:56,000 --> 00:57:58,000
Absolutely, and thank you, John, for what

739
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:00,000
your group does also. It's

740
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:02,000
influential and it's being noticed.

741
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:04,000
The team at AEA

742
00:58:04,000 --> 00:58:08,160
and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge

743
00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:13,240
and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems.

744
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:18,280
At AEA, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops

745
00:58:18,280 --> 00:58:19,600
is possible.

746
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:24,040
And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just

747
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:31,400
that. At AEA, we don't guess, we test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific

748
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,920
data, knowledge, and experience.

749
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:37,380
We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money

750
00:58:37,380 --> 00:58:39,520
with regenerative agriculture.

751
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:50,680
If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to

752
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:50,680
If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to

753
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:52,100
see if AEA is right for you.