Farming Podcast | Farming With Purpose: Soil Health, Legacy & Sustainability

00:00:00 More than yields farming with purpose. We're talking about a little bit bigger picture here and what it is we do for a living. 00:00:06 It's a good time to be reflective and talk about what you really wanna pass down. I've got Matt Miles and Brian Strater in this very special 00:00:12 episode of extreme Ag Cutting the Curve. It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, 00:00:18 and improving your farming operation every week. This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 00:00:27 to help farmers do the biggest job honor. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:35 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ag Carrying the Curve. I got Brian Strider with a company called Holganix. 00:00:41 Wholeganics is a company that we've been working with now for a couple years at Extreme Ag. 00:00:44 In fact, uh, Holganix just had our friend Matt, uh, temple and Kevin in Washington DC last week. 00:00:51 That's right. Mucky mucks, I think is the term that comes to mind when you think about Matt Miles. 00:00:55 But Matt Miles is not just a muck monkey. He's also an Arkansas farmer. He is also talks a little bit about legacy. 00:01:00 Uh, if you've tuned into our stuff over the last four years of me interviewing him on his farm at his field days, 00:01:05 on our webinars and all these, uh, cutting the curve podcasts, you'll know that, uh, Matt came back the farm, his father died. 00:01:12 Uh, Matt has a son Lane that works with him, 30, 31-year-old man. And, uh, also got a couple of grandkids there. 00:01:18 And also his, his daughter's married to a farmer. So legacy is very important. And what we're talking about here is the, 00:01:24 the why behind the what. Okay. We know you gotta make yield. We know you wanna make big yields. 00:01:29 We know that you want to, uh, make money, all that stuff. But then there's the other side of it. 00:01:34 And then I think that's where some of these product lineups that we're talking about, we've 00:01:39 overused synthetic nutrition. We've, uh, we've overused in some cases, some chemistry is kind of harsh. 00:01:44 We think we can do a better job, and frankly, we are doing a better job. So I guess the question I'd ask, and we just, 00:01:52 before we hit the record button, we're talking about how things are a little bit bleak right now in agriculture. Are you still excited about the future, man, 00:02:00 you look out there, you drive into the farm this morning to the office, you still get excited about the next 00:02:07 generation's opportunities? Well, yes. You know, we talked about this earlier. I'm 56 years old, so I'm, I'm on my kind 00:02:17 of my downhill slope of, of, of my career in farming. But, you know, and it is bleak and there's a, you know, and, and, and your, you monkey on your shoulder would tell you, 00:02:28 Hey, you probably ought to get out. You probably ought to quit. You know, this thing's looking bad. 00:02:34 To get that monkey off my shoulder, driving to the farm, looking at the sunrise, knowing that I'm going to go to work 00:02:40 and spend the day with people that I love, my son, my wife, you know, we're a family operation. 00:02:46 We work together. When you, I say, I say this a lot, when you work with the people you love, that's not really work. 00:02:53 Yeah. It's hard. Yeah. We get sweaty. Yeah, we bleed. I mean, I'm bloodied from the picker from last night. Um, but it's a heritage thing. 00:03:03 Very few people get the opportunity to be that close working with their family. Now, some of 'em probably don't like it, 00:03:10 but I'm fortunate that my family all gets along and there's just not a better day than a day on the farm. Yeah, it's, uh, and we've done this in the 00:03:19 greenery, our greenery show. And by the way, if you're listening to this or watching this and you haven't checked out our greenery 00:03:24 show, I encourage you to do so. Matt's been on a number of episodes. It's taped right here at my Indiana Farm. 00:03:28 We sit down, we invite you to pull up a chair and join the conversation. We talk about everything from 00:03:32 the personal to the professional. You can find the Greenery Show, uh, at Extreme ag.farm or on our YouTube channel. 00:03:38 Go on YouTube, type in extreme ag and you can hit subscribe. It doesn't cost anything. 00:03:43 We've got 40 episodes, uh, that have, uh, almost 40 episodes have been released with the Grainery Show. 00:03:48 So it's a really good time. You should check it out. Um, from a personal standpoint, there's a professional standpoint. 00:03:52 There's everything in between when we're talking about this topic, Mr. Strider. Um, I, I think that 00:04:01 ag people there, there's, there's every industry. There's folks that they do a s****y job. They, they don't care and, and all that. 00:04:09 And then there's the, the types that really truly are in this, because there's a legacy component to it. And legacy means sometimes leaving it water, 00:04:17 leaving it better than I than when I got it. You know, I think that I enjoy talking to those people because they truly are, are looking at, at, um, you know, 00:04:27 the soil, uh, buying this crummy farm that, uh, was mistreated and then bringing it back to life. All that kinda stuff. I, I get excited about that. 00:04:35 I feel like I've done a little bit of that myself here, to be honest with you. You put in drainage tile and drainage ditches 00:04:39 and bringing in manure and, and do what we can to grow the organic matter percentage and all that. I kind of like that, that that topic. 00:04:47 Um, and I think there's more of that than the average, um, than the average person would realize. 00:04:53 Yeah, there is, you know, there's, there's, when you talk about the farm, you talk about legacy and you talk about family, um, 00:05:00 there's something very satisfying about looking back on what you've done and, and leaving it better than, than what it started. 00:05:07 And just like you said, I, we've got, I've got friends and neighbors, um, that have gotten an old farm and have, have done improvements, 00:05:17 and they're very proud of what they've done to their farm. Um, and that leads into, you know, I started 00:05:23 with organics in 2023, used it on my farm. And, um, I didn't start, I didn't wanna start with the company until I saw what it was going to do 00:05:34 for a farm, my farm. Because in order to be able to look a farmer in the eye and say, this is what it does, I know what it can do, 00:05:41 I wanted to feel comfortable with it. So with that journey, um, we've been able to get on other farms and, 00:05:49 and help try to make those improvements because as, as Matt said earlier, you know, he's got, he's got blood behind him that's gonna come in 00:06:00 and run this farm. And we're, we're working, we're making strides to make those farms better by, you know, improving the soil. 00:06:09 Um, and we, for years, we've unknowingly beat the hell out of our soil doing the best we could with 00:06:15 what the knowledge we had. I, I, I wanna go to that one because that's one that I find it funny. You know, we asked before we hit the record. 00:06:22 So Matt and I are 56 years old, and you're a little younger than us. Um, I still, I bump into people 00:06:27 and I do this when I speak at events, and I, I bring this up. I say, I still, when I'm around suburbanites traveling, 00:06:35 whatever, I just wish we could farm like the old days when it was all a bunch of small family farms instead 00:06:40 of these corporate farms. I said, what do you think that looked like? And there's this belief 00:06:45 that somehow it was more wholesome and we were better. I said, have you heard of a thing called the Dust Bowl? We plowed up six states so they could blow into two others. 00:06:56 I mean, this idea that we were, that we were more holistic and wholesome and pastoral 60 years 00:07:04 ago is nonsense. It's not even true. Matt. Are are things being done in a more environmentally cognizant and environmentally, uh, 00:07:15 aware factor in McGee County? I'm sorry, in Desha County than they were when you were born? I would think so, 00:07:22 A hundred percent. You know, and, and, and that's where, you know, I, I look up to companies like organics and, and it, 00:07:30 and it's took the internet. Um, you know, because a farmer's not out there reading encyclopedia much, but he is getting on his phone. 00:07:38 He is looking at, you know, educational things. There's meetings you can go to. I know so much more about soil health today 00:07:47 than my dad did at 56. You know, he was doing his best, but they weren't. The education we get today by companies like organics, 00:07:56 and they're proving it, you know, and, and farmers are so close minded, especially the old dogs. And I say old dogs being the generation below me. 00:08:04 Why, you know, that ain't gonna work. You know, the biggest thing I, biggest mistake I ever make 00:08:09 is saying, well, that ain't gonna work. That's a snake hole. You know? And education has showed us. And, and if you don't believe it, try it. 00:08:17 All you gotta do is try it. And if you, if you've got a thousand acre farm, don't go do a thousand acres, do 200. 00:08:23 Right. Prove to yourself. And then you'll be able to say, Hey, I want this on a thousand acres 00:08:28 and anything else I rent, I'm gonna put it on too. Soil health is a real deal. And it's not a magic bullet where one product, 00:08:36 whole organics is not gonna fix everything that you have, but they're going to aid in the, the repair 00:08:42 of your soil from years past when we haven't treated it quite like we treat it now, and the yields are there. It's been so cool this year. 00:08:50 It's cost me money outta my pocket. But I, I rented a lot of extra land this year because some farmers didn't make it. 00:08:57 And every farm that I rented was 20% less yield than the farms I've been farming for the last 10 years. So 00:09:05 There Is, there is, it's, it's hard to argue you, okay, there's gonna be somebody that says, well, that's why those farms got given up. 00:09:11 And that's why those guys couldn't make it. 'cause they're lesser properties and you're saying, no, they're fairly identical. 00:09:16 It's, they're better, they're better properties. They've been, they've been not farmed as well. They, they, they've been farmed as well. 00:09:26 The attention hasn't been paid to soil health or organic matter and different things like that. And, you know, you, we said this before the podcast started. 00:09:36 It may have been during the podcast slinging fertilizer out there. Synthetic fertilizers is not the answer. No. 00:09:42 They got that organics has got mounds of data. It opened my eyes some, you know, some of the guys that I talked to this past week, mounds of data 00:09:51 where they're not using any fertilizer anymore. Now, I'd love to be in a state that had that black soil that I could do that. 00:09:58 And I'm not, you know, I've still gotta aid my synthetic fertilizer, but I've reduced that by 10 00:10:06 to 20% on every different synthetic fertilizer I use. Now, I've increased my micros because micros help aid in soil health too. 00:10:15 But I have decreased these high amounts and thinking that sling nitrogen out there and that's gonna make my corn better. 00:10:21 That's not even close to the right, right answer. Well, the other thing, the point to that is if y'all see the input prices is, is, 00:10:29 is a big talking point to coming into 26. The fertilizer guys ain't going down. No. The price is not going down for whatever reason. 00:10:39 You talk, you talk about slinging rocks, and you're right. I, it, it gets me, I, I just can't understand. 00:10:47 They haven't improved damn thing on fertilizer since Moby Dick was a minute. It's the same fertilizer as it was 70 years ago. 00:11:00 But yet they keep raising the price, raising the price, and it's, it's, it's done nothing different than what it's done for years. 00:11:09 And actually, it's hurt our soil because of all the synthetic we put in, and it's, it's knocked our soil. 00:11:16 I'm not knocking farmers, I'm not knocking the fertilizer industry. What I'm saying is, is the lack of knowledge that we 00:11:25 had, we didn't know any better. Mm-hmm. We did with what we the best we could. But now as we can make that soil better, 00:11:33 we can make the biology better. We don't need as much because we'll let the soil go back to work for the farmer. And I'm gonna go ahead 00:11:43 and knock the synthetic fertilizer industry because it's a mafia. They set the process. They're way above what they should be. 00:11:51 They control, completely control the market, just like drug dealers control the marijuana market. And, and it's been the same thing. 00:12:00 It's the exact same analysis it was when they started digging it out of the ground. And they don't, and, and, 00:12:07 and the retailers don't promote, they sell fertilizers. So why would they promote soil health when it's gonna reduce the amount of fertilizer you use? 00:12:16 Yep. Look at the forest. I mean, you look at these forests, they're doing great. They ain't had no fertilizer on 'em. Right. 00:12:25 You know, and the problem with retailers is as we keep moving forward into agriculture, it's not about the farmer anymore. 00:12:37 To them, it's about who's gonna give 'em the best duck trip or who's gonna give the best, 00:12:42 give 'em the best kickback on fertilizer or chemical or whatever. You know, wizard p**s they got in their, in their jug 00:12:51 that's gonna get paid more. Point is, is Wholeganics does care about the farmer. We see it. And, and if without these farmers, 00:13:03 The World's not going to be the, the way it is it right now. It's gonna get worse. And, you know, you go back to 00:13:09 what Damien's point about the, you know, the picket fence and the, and the, the holistic farm and all that. 00:13:18 I never saw that in my five generations. It ain't that fancy. Never was. It was all hard work and sweat and, 00:13:26 and get her done. And from Moby Dick as a minnow, listen to this man from Moby Dick as a minnow to Wizard p**s. 00:13:33 This guy, this, this guy Brian Stride is on. I mean, I thought the, I thought the most, uh, poetic, the, the guy that was capable of writing the best prose out 00:13:42 of Missouri was Mark Twain. I think right behind him is Brian Strainer. Uh, you're, You're Write some these things 00:13:52 down because I'm gonna use these next time I talk. Go for it. Um, What the personal side, the personal side of this thing is, um, you know, 00:14:03 we keep talking about soil and all that and, and the changes. But you know, the, the other part of it, 00:14:10 I think when I look at this is you, you want it to be a business and a lifestyle. And it can be, I guess there's a perception that 00:14:22 I see from, again, non-ag people that, because now Matt Miles has a couple dozen employees and has certain parts of it set up as an LLC 00:14:35 that still isn't a family business operation, which is not true. And so, I mean, there's, there's the, just though, 00:14:44 there's a, a group think among suburbanites that every other business is supposed to evolve Tesla's versus Model A, 00:14:54 but agriculture are still supposed to be, uh, you know, like it was some, I don't know, they, there's a, somehow it's about 1950. 00:15:03 I think that's about when everybody 40 thinks its supposed 40 acres Mule, let's call it 40 acres and a mule. 00:15:07 Yeah. I mean, That's right. This is The, that's not, I wanna comment to that 62 0 7 highway, 65 North, that's my address. 00:15:18 McGee, Arkansas, the suburbanites need to come spend a little time with us. You know, they sit there and look on social media, 00:15:25 the suburban mom does, and how we're trying to kill 'em with all these products. Come spend some time with me. Any, everybody's welcome. 00:15:35 If they'll come spend a day on the farm, they will understand. Yes. I'm, I'm a big farmer. 00:15:43 I've been forced into being a big farmer, but if you take me and my son, you divide it by two, 00:15:48 I'm not that big of a farmer. Right, Right. What about, uh, when you think about Ryan around, around your, uh, your operation there, 00:15:58 you think about the legacy part of it. What do you want to look like? You know, In a, in a perfect world, I can remember when I, 00:16:10 and I'll just tell you flat out, when, when my grandfather retired, my dad had to get his checkbook out, go 00:16:19 to the bank, borrow money, buy him out, bought my great uncle out. I remember that. I mean, it was not given, um, 00:16:29 when I started, uh, in several years ago, I went to the bank, borrowed money, bought my mom and dad out. 00:16:40 Hmm. So, in a perfect world, my legacy would be for my kids with knowing, knowing now what I do know is 00:16:51 to make it make the transition a lot easier for them. I mean, listen, I appreciate my family and I appreciate them making me buy it. 00:17:02 So I have a, a true appreciation for the farm. Um, so I want, I want my legacy to be the same Damien down to my kids. 00:17:14 Um, down, I've got family that I work with too, um, that are, that are coming into the operation. They're, they're young operators. 00:17:22 Um, and my legacy is to keep, is to leave it better than I found it. And I have no complaints the way I found it, 00:17:31 but I'm gonna make, I want it to be better. We said we're gonna call it more than yields farming with purpose. 00:17:38 What's that mean to you, Matt? Because also, I, I think yields are very important. I mean, it's a business and I mean, 00:17:43 I run a show called The Business of Agriculture, so I have no problem saying it's a business. In fact, I sometimes bristle at this idea that, well, yeah, 00:17:51 they don't make any money, but you know, they're the way things are supposed to be. I said, what the hell does that mean? 00:17:56 Uh, what they've got, they got two dozen cows out there. They don't really manage it like a herd. It's a hobby. 00:18:01 If it's just a hobby, that's fine, but let's call it what it is. But if it's a business, it's a business. 00:18:06 And I, I think that you've gotta have a really nice job in town or your own business that you own 00:18:11 to, to make this a hobby. I did the hobby beef thing for 13 years. Trust me, I I know this. 00:18:17 Um, you, you treat it like a business. So I think that Nick, you've got a pretty good balance, Matt. 00:18:23 Well, yeah. You run it as a business and, and you also have a little bit more of a heartfelt angle on it too. 00:18:30 Yeah. You, I mean, there's a way to do both. You can't, you know, you can go broke trying to save money. Uh, you know, we have to have an ROI, 00:18:38 everything's gotta produce. You can't be out here farming just because it gives you a fuzzy feeling in your, 00:18:44 in your, you know, in your body. But there are ways to do both. You know, Kelly says this, a lot of times, 00:18:50 the sustainability path or the regen path and the high yield path converge. If you really look at what you're doing, 00:18:59 you can make higher yields and protect your soil at the same time. You know, and you can do that as a family farm 00:19:06 And use less synthetics and Yeah. Less tillage, less synthetics you can do. And, and because we, we've got the tools coming, 00:19:15 like organics, we got better tools now than we did just a decade ago. There's still some, there was, 00:19:20 there's still some wizard p**s out there. Yeah, there is. There was no organics back then. There were no biological companies. 00:19:27 Now granted, we've been flooded with biological companies. I mean, hundreds of biological companies. 00:19:33 They're selling everything from frozen bugs to, to stuff that don't work. There's no regulation on what they're doing. 00:19:41 So I could see where a farmer would get very confused at what's going on. What do I buy, what do I not buy? What ROIs and what don't. 00:19:48 ROI, and that's where I said, you've gotta try these products. You know, for a long time I was trying biologicals 00:19:54 and they weren't working two, three years. And I'm like, what in the world? This is supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. 00:20:01 I was using city water, which was heavy, heavy chlorinated. The minute I was putting the biology in the tank, 00:20:09 put the water in there, I was killing every bit of it. You know, there's education and companies like organics, you know, they're, 00:20:15 you can't just go get their product and set it out here in a tote like you do Roundup and go back in two months and, 00:20:22 and say, Hey, I'm gonna put this whole organics out because it's real. It's living. And there's certain ways you gotta handle it. 00:20:27 If you want the good stuff, you've gotta be able to take a little bit more time out, hit the easy button, and, and protect that stuff and put it out. 00:20:36 Right. And back to the family farm thing, you know, everybody in here just about in my whole operation is, is kin in some way. 00:20:45 Maybe not necessarily to me. I've got husband and wifes that work together. I've got uncles and nephews, 00:20:51 I've got landowners that work for me. I've got one landowner that quit his job and said he was gonna work for me. 00:20:58 And I said, well, I don't have a position. He said, well, you need to create one. I said, I don't have the money so well, I'll work for free. 00:21:03 So they're still family operations out here that are bigger. Operate, just because you're bigger don't mean you need 00:21:11 to get penalized as being a corporate farm. Yeah. Right, Right, right. You 00:21:14 can be big and still be a family farm. You know, I've got several, I've got several friends and family that farm anywhere from 10,000 00:21:25 to 30,000 acres, and I can walk into that office every day and see the owner or get out and go to pick up with the owner. 00:21:36 Um, and the owner makes a decision. So people have a, have a vision of a fam of a corporate farm being big acres. 00:21:47 Well, it's not, the difference between a corporate farm and a family farm to me is like a farmer's national or, or something like that. 00:21:56 A a a group that manages, that's corporate. But I don't deal with any corporate farms. I don't know. I mean, you guys travel a lot. 00:22:05 I deal with zero corporate farms. Well, corp, they, they might, it might be like, obviously at a certain point, if you're not set up as an LLC 00:22:13 or as an S-corp or C-corp, you're just being irresponsible because of the amount of assets 00:22:17 and the liability and all those things. And I, I believe that some of our friends that listen to NPR hear this thing about corporate farms. 00:22:25 Like that could be, if I have 500 acres, I'm still gonna be structured as some sort of a corporation just because of taxes, 00:22:32 because of liability, because of the handoff ability. Uh, yeah. You know, all of the, the, for God's sakes, you know, is your dry clean, 00:22:41 is your little dry cleaner down the road? Are they also a corporation? You know, you love going there and taking your shirts in. 00:22:46 It doesn't mean that they're somehow evil, it just means that they, they had to set their company up a certain way. 00:22:52 They're covered their, I've got five businesses besides the farm, and all of 'em are an LLC. Mm-hmm. It's for risk protection. It's for tax purposes. 00:23:02 But we get lumped into that corporate farm. I've personally never seen a corporate farm. I don't even know what one looks like, where it's my board 00:23:11 and one or two. I've never seen that. I don't know. I mean, where are they at Damon? You, you've done a lot of work. Uh, 00:23:17 Cal I guess you'd probably say some of the California very large scale specialty produce might fit more of that model. 00:23:26 Um, and then obviously there's those that would call Tyson a corporate farm because they do own chickens and, uh, vertically integrated 00:23:36 and then employ farmers to, uh, to man the chicken houses for 'em. So maybe that's where that would, 00:23:42 that connotation would come in. Um, I guess the other part of this is, um, when, when you think about, um, the, the care, I know 00:23:54 that there's this perception also that small operators care more about their soil care, more about natural resources and large operators don't. 00:24:02 And I would say this is patently false. Um, I'll give you an example. The guy chopping silage 00:24:08 behind my house right now is a dairyman. And he's got 32 to 3,400 milking cows between three facilities, 00:24:16 which is obviously very large compared to a dairy farm of my era growing up. I can tell you that when I drive through his cow barns, 00:24:23 those cows are in better condition than any cow that was on our farm growing up. It's not because we were mean or abusive, it's just 00:24:30 because they have veterinary visits once a week. Protocols put in place a hired nutrition consultant, um, that make sure that the rations are amazingly done. 00:24:42 Just pres just prescribed nutrition, if you will. Uh, fresh water every about a hundred feet in those barns. Fans blowing on them, uh, sand cleaners through bedding. 00:24:53 The idea that somehow big means they do a, a lesser job of caring for the resource is just absolutely false. 00:25:02 You know? And so, man, my, uh, you know, knock out 12,000 acres doesn't mean that he's mistreating the 12,000 acres just 00:25:09 because he's got a lot of acres. And I think that that's, uh, something that there's a big misperception about. 00:25:16 There is a big perception because, um, the growers that I work with that are neighbors and friends, you know, they're looking at everything 00:25:25 and they, they paid more attention to, and, and, and I can tell you this as a farmer, Matt, I don't know where you're at all this, but the most expensive part 00:25:36 of a farm operation is a tractor and a damn sugar and mowing roadsides and keeping things nice and, and, you know, doing the right things. 00:25:47 I don't know of anybody, any farmer likes to do it, but we all do it. But the point is, is we take care of the land, take care 00:25:53 of the farms, and big, small, all round. I see people taking care of things. And you know, there was only one farm family 00:26:05 that I've ever seen in my entire life that's an hour north of me that is, has a show, and they're whatever. 00:26:14 They're the worst I've ever seen, ever. I, I know by, I have seen it by the way, um, I always gripe about the people in the Red River 00:26:21 Valley in North Dakota. They're massively big potato producers. And they, as soon as they get done harvesting, 00:26:27 they go out there and they cultivate that up. So then all winter along, you can see the black, beautiful black dirt blowing onto the snow. 00:26:33 So I know that some larger scale, they still do a tremendous amount of tillage, which is bad for the ground. 00:26:38 They probably still do sling too many synthetic, uh, fertility rock products out there. But I'm just saying that's, that's not always the case. 00:26:48 In fact, many times it's not the case. Right? No, we, there's a lot of tillage, recreational tillage now, what I call it, 00:26:54 because if you get your soil right and you get your biology right in your soil, you don't have to do that as much. 00:27:01 All right. So comments is, we're like, where we're at with the fur irrigation, we have to do a certain amount of tillage Yep. 00:27:07 Because we have to get that water from the top end of the field to the bottom. Yep. Our, our, our bean yields will go from 80 to 20. 00:27:15 Mm-hmm. Right. You know, my high bean yield this year is probably going be about 22 bushel. 00:27:21 My irrigated s gonna be about 75 to 80. So we have to irrigate it. We're not gonna be in business. And you have to be able to give 00:27:28 that water path and go through. So one size don't fit all right? There gotta be some tillage in certain areas, but, 00:27:36 but you can still, I've benefited by reduced tillage by doing, when I can get everything right, I can no till some, you know, I've got 1100 figure rice farm 00:27:46 that hadn't been tilled in, shoot, I don't four years, probably hadn't had a tillage application on it. You know, I don't have to water that for irrigation. 00:27:55 So I can do that in a different way. But, but you know, there is guys out there doing mass tillage and tillage is not good for your soil. 00:28:03 Anytime you can reduce tillage, you're going to increase your biology. No question. But there is certain situations, you know, 00:28:11 I've been to some meetings where if you till, um, and, and the ho Icks meeting couple, some of those guys in there were just like, 00:28:19 I don't wanna slump down in my seat like yet. I have to till some, you know, because they were like, if you till you're going to hell. 00:28:27 Well, Yeah, Yeah. For certain situations, and I brought that up where in certain areas you have to do a little bit of tillage, 00:28:35 but you can, it's just like reduction of fertilizer. I'm, I'm not totally zero fertilizer now, right. But by 20% Right. 00:28:44 Tillage, I used to be a hundred percent tillage. I'm probably 40 to 60% minimum till some of it's no-till. 00:28:54 So there's still ways to improve, even though you can't be a hundred percent no-till. Mm-hmm. 00:28:59 Absolutely. And, and you know, heck on my farm, I've got vertical tilt. I mean, I, you know, I hit a couple 00:29:04 inches stirred a little bit. I don't go any more than six inches, which pretty much we call tillage. 00:29:11 Yeah. Um, so there, there's no, just like, to Matt's point, there's no magic bullet. 00:29:18 There's no product that fixes every acre on every farm. Um, but just like you're saying, you're doing less tillage than you were in the past. 00:29:30 Um, but when you, when you do that, you know, you, when you're doing your irrigation on your beans, you're getting a lot of daggum compaction, um, you know, 00:29:39 and you have to get that stuff stirred up, up and have to figure out a way to get that water to percolate through the soil. 00:29:46 And it's a process. It's, if there's no magic bullet, it's a process. But if we're calling tillage deeper than six inches, I'm, 00:29:54 I'm, I'm 80% no till, maybe 90%. Yeah. By the way, Anyway, Brian, that's just something Brian came up with. 00:30:00 It's right up there with this Moby Dick thing. He just made that up. It's if it's, if, if somehow it doesn't count as tillage 00:30:06 until it goes six inches, he's, he's just made that up anyway. Now I'll Say this, six inches is made about that, about like that. 00:30:13 There you go. Yeah. So, and the, and the reason for the six inches, Damien, is because there's a web of, of fungi below the soil, and, 00:30:22 and it works its way down. But if you, if you tear that up, then you've, then your, your web of, of goodness is gone. 00:30:30 Yeah. So that's, that's where we get with the, you know, and it's a, just like, it's a tomato, tomato, tomato, 00:30:37 just like, just like Matt said, hell, somebody's six inches could be this, somebody's six inches could be, you know, that's the thing. 00:30:45 All right. So, uh, we're getting on the verge of, uh, PG 13 here. Um, the legacy part of it. All right? 00:30:54 More than yields farming of purpose. What's farming of purpose mean? Brian, you go first. I think that you already said you wanna make sure 00:31:00 that there's the family aspect of it. Uh, I think there's that, uh, leaving things better than I than I took 'em on. 00:31:07 Although you didn't leave it, you didn't, you didn't take on, you know, anything poorly. Uh, what else, what else is 00:31:13 Purpose? You know, the legacy to me is also when a farm thrives, a community thrives. And what I mean by that is, 00:31:26 is the better we can make our farm successful, the better we make our communities. And to me, what I would like a legacy 00:31:35 to be, for me, just to, to have a, um, an awesome farm b to help the family and c to help our, our communities. 00:31:45 So just build it from, from the bottom up, Matt. Yeah. Well, you, Brian's about got me in tears because, um, you know, we all say the same song and dance. 00:31:58 We wanna leave it better than Yeah. Yep. You know, we wanna have whatever. But when he, when he, he hit a nerve there, not a nerve, 00:32:05 but a, an emotional nerve when he is talking about the community. My daughter just did a, a article, she's 34, 00:32:14 they farm, they're in trouble. And she just did an article, which is gonna be the cover for Delta Farm Press, I think in October. 00:32:24 And it was about, you know, we probably got 20 or 30 young farmers, it's come back to this county because to try to build a community. 00:32:34 Mm-hmm. And Mr. Brian said it as well as anything, if you're in an ag community and ag doesn't work, then the, the community don't work. 00:32:44 You're gonna lose teachers, you're gonna lose hospitals. Mm. You're gonna lose your doctors, your lawyers, your Walmart, 00:32:49 which I'm not Walmart, maybe your mainstream mom and pop stores. Yep. If the farm's successful, the community's successful. 00:32:58 Just like he said, that's perfect way to put it. I don't, I mean, you couldn't write that down in a poem any better than, than, 00:33:04 than what Brian said. And that just hit home because she did that article and sent me a copy of it yesterday. 00:33:10 And, and it is, it's, it, it's happening. And if we don't, if we don't, and, and we're tied sometimes to how good our farm can be by 00:33:20 what the government does with our commodities. Yeah. You know, and so we put all those pieces of pizza together, and I, I'm not, I don't have a comment, 00:33:29 what Brian said works for, for, if that don't work for everybody that farms, then they don't need to be farming. 00:33:36 Mm-hmm. I, I'll leave it right there. I think that's probably an accurate statement. Thank you Brian. We to wrap it up. 00:33:43 I mean, you didn't start off so good, but you, you sure came around at the end. I mean, you, once you got your, 00:33:47 once you got your little Moby dick min things going, uh, then it, and it worked out great. 00:33:51 All right. His name's Brian Strat, the company called Strategy. He's a company called Organics. He is 00:33:54 joined by a friend, Matt Miles. Matt Miles was actually in, uh, our nation's capital with organics just, uh, 00:33:59 last week talking about the situation in agriculture in the United States. America, when you talk about farming and more than yields 00:34:05 and farming a purpose, let's talk about farming in the future. And that's what they were, they were talking about. 00:34:08 If you wanna learn more about organics, Brian, where do they go? Uh, we go, you gotta get online. 00:34:14 Look up organic.com and uh, we can steer you to where you need to be. I'm in Missouri. We've got guys in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, 00:34:22 Indiana, Kansas. We're all over the place. Arkansas. I'm gonna come down and see Matt, I gotta bring some shirts. Go 00:34:30 Ahead. Yeah. All ahead. The company's called Holganix, H-O-L-G-A-N-I-X, Holganix. He's name Brian Strater. He's joined by Matt Miles. 00:34:38 Remember, if you like this, share it with somebody that can benefit from it. Uh, we talk about a lot of different things here. 00:34:42 We've been putting these episodes out for more than four years now. Hundreds of episodes of cutting the curve. 00:34:46 Also, hundreds and hundreds of videos. These guys shoot on their farms to help you farm better. And then we've also got our shortcuts 00:34:53 and we have our grain ratio. Not to mention, if you wanna take your learning to the next level, become an Extreme Ag member 00:34:58 for just $750 a year. You get access to, uh, technical information, you get yearend data results, 00:35:04 you get special offers from our business partners. Go to Extreme ag.farm to learn more about that. Till next time, thanks for being here. 00:35:11 I'm Damien Mason with extreme Ag cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm 00:35:19 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 00:35:24 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is brought to you by BASF, creating innovation 820 00:35:30.105 --> 00:35:32.405