Podcast: The Road to Regenerative - Why & When Change is Coming to Conventional Farming?

00:00:00 How and why regenerative, organic, and conventional farming practices are going to fuse in the very near future. 00:00:07 That's our topic in today's extreme ag, cutting the curve. Welcome to extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, 00:00:14 where real farmers share real insights and real results to help you improve your farming operation. And now here's your host, Damien Mason. 00:00:24 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of extreme Ag. Cutting the curve. It's me, Damien Mason. 00:00:28 You knew that 'cause you heard in the introduction. I've got Kelly Garrett here, one of the founders of Extreme Ag and we're joined by Josh Miller. 00:00:33 Josh and I become fast friends. Uh, I had him on my business of agriculture show, and, uh, we talked a lot about the future 00:00:41 as it might be impacted, um, from some changes at the United States Department of Agriculture that might involve Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 00:00:46 So I encourage you to check that out. We don't get terribly political, we just talk about the actual industry 00:00:50 and some activism against it or for it. Um, and that got us thinking about this kind of topic. Um, RFK Jr. 00:00:57 By the time you're listening to this might already, we might know that, uh, if Trump wins, he's promised that he's going to be within the United States Department 00:01:05 of Agriculture, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And it's brought to the forefront a lot of discussion about regenerative agriculture. 00:01:10 He's a huge proponent of it. There's certain things about agriculture that he rails against. 00:01:14 I think it's, uh, a little bit of a trust fund sort of guy from Massachusetts, sort of a, a meth methodology. But, um, he's, he is very anti chemistry. 00:01:22 He's very anti large scale farms. Well, that's a neat idea, but also it can't feed the world. So what we're talking about is where these things confuse. 00:01:30 Organic has some very good merits. Regenerative is a new concept. Got some very good merits. Conventional farming. Well, it got us here 00:01:38 and we've got surpluses even though we have 8 billion miles to feed. So there's a lot to be said for all three of the systems. 00:01:44 Kelly and Josh are gonna talk about how we see this fusion coming together. And by the way, if you are a zealot, 00:01:49 if you are an organic zealot, or if you are a by God, I'm going till until they take away my tractor keys. 00:01:56 You, this, this episode may not be for you because there's probably no changing you. This is for the minds that are in the middle 00:02:01 that realize we're all on an evolution. Kelly, did I state that right? Yes. People that are open to evolution, 00:02:08 You are not, you are not a zealot, but you are doing regenerative practices now in Crawford County, Iowa, that you weren't doing five years ago 00:02:16 and sure as hell weren't doing 25 years ago. That's true. I, uh, I am not married to any practice. I'm not married to any product or anything like that. 00:02:26 I would tell you that I just try to be about the science and I try to just keep getting better. 00:02:31 And you know what, the definition of better I isn't always necessarily yield. It's, it's sometimes reducing the cost. 00:02:38 It's sometimes reducing a practice which reduces the cost. It's about ROI and it's the short term ROI 00:02:44 and the long term RI. Sometimes things, the things we do for soil health have a short term expense, 00:02:49 but they have a long term gain. That's what regen ag is to me. You've pointed out, before we hit record, it's important 00:02:56 to understand the difference. So the person listen to this works in agriculture, they understand the difference, 00:03:01 but in case we're sharing this with someone that's not in the farming game, conventional, we're talking about, when, when I say conventional, 00:03:08 I mean everything that is happening on farms in America. Yes. Using chemistry. Yes. 00:03:13 Perhaps using genetically engineered crops, uh, for seed. Mm-Hmm. Uh, yes, doing some tillage. 00:03:19 Um, and, and pretty much what all the universities have done, places like Purdue or Iowa State have taken us to this point. 00:03:28 And we have amazing amounts of productivity, but we also are starting to admit there's some sins that have gone with that. 00:03:34 We've overused fertility in particular. You want to touch on that? Then we're wanna go to Josh. We've overused synthetic fertility 00:03:41 and we have thrown, uh, thrown in my position. This is a, a you know, this is a broad statement, but we've thrown soil out of balance. 00:03:48 We don't understand the nitrogen cycle. We don't understand P and k, uh, we don't understand what comes along with that. 00:03:55 P and k, uh, potash or muriate of potash is the most widely known potassium fertilizer, dry fertilizer on the face of the earth. 00:04:04 And why is it the most widely used? It's the cheapest and the, the, it's potassium chloride. KCL. And so when a farmer puts on O oh 60, 00:04:14 which is the, the symbol for it, you're getting 60 pounds, a k, 40 pounds of chloride, cl 00:04:19 what does that do to your soil? I don't think farmers know. The reason I become in tune to this is 00:04:24 because of the plant food byproduct I spray. And farmers always want to know what's harmful about it. So we'll talk about all the things that are in plant food. 00:04:31 And of course, because I'm competing against the local AG retails, they'll tell people there's too much salt in it. 00:04:36 Well, they're referring to sodium and there's about 40 pounds of sodium in my product that I put on. 00:04:42 Um, you know, at the, at the standard rate sodium wases out in our environment. Very, very easy. Things like that. 00:04:48 It's a, that's a very low volume. The 40 pounds of chloride that we're putting on doesn't wash out. 00:04:54 And I think that there's just a real lack of education on, on what's going on. Then when you want to talk about soil health 00:05:00 and things like that, uh, or plant health, the overuse of nitrogen, the overuse of, of all of the synthetic f utilities, we should try to learn 00:05:08 how to work in tune with Mother Nature not to be in, not to even be organic or environmental. 00:05:14 The reason is to become more efficient and, and the I score to ultimately become more profitable. I'm trying to become as profitable as possible. 00:05:24 Yeah. And so I, I mean, again, we're not judging. I've got a buddy that's an organic farmer 10 miles from here, and he's not a zealot. 00:05:32 He says it's really simple. I didn't come into this with a lot of, uh, capital. Okay. I was young. He said, 00:05:39 I can make a lot more margin on per acre by doing organic. Uh, and that's why he does it. 00:05:45 And granted, he's a soils guy, but he does it not out of zealotry, but out of margin, out of profit. Uh, 00:05:52 If he, then that's the right reason to do it. And if he has a market for those products, that's great. In Western Iowa, I don't have a great market 00:05:58 for those products, so I don't, I don't judge anybody at all. Yeah. I'm just trying to say, I'm trying to become 00:06:03 as efficient as possible. That's not efficient for me and my hills. So, uh, Josh, Dr. 00:06:09 Josh Miller, if you're watching, he wrote this book right here that's in my hand called Peeling Back the Labels. 00:06:14 He is not an ag guy from birth, but he joined ag. He's got a whole bunch of degrees. Um, and, and he's, he wrote this book right here. 00:06:22 And this is kind of what you're addressing. First off, it's not a, I work for one of the four big chemical company national multinational 00:06:30 companies, and so I'm gonna, uh, go out and just be, uh, you know, their, their mouthpiece. It's more that you're saying, Hey, it, this, 00:06:39 this doesn't mean, this doesn't mean that, that, that there's not a several right answers. That's kind of the approach you took. 00:06:46 Yeah, I think it, it comes down to worldview. We talked about last week that a lot of people have a worldview that there's a good guy 00:06:52 and a bad guy in every situation. And I, I really don't tend to operate that way. Um, I think that we're all trying to do the best we can, 00:06:59 but when we paint one thing or one process, or one method as bad, inherently bad. And I think that's what really happens with 00:07:07 what we call con conventional agriculture. Or as you know, those, the zealots on the other side would call 00:07:13 it chemical agriculture. I think that that's what's happening. Instead of saying, Hey, this is 00:07:18 the evolution we've had in the agricultural industry, you know, since World War ii, with the advent of synthetic fertilizers 00:07:24 and chemicals to get us to the production, the productive level that we're at today, where we can start to have conversations because we are feeding the world 00:07:31 cheaply, um, especially this country feeding 'em cheaply, that we can, we can turn our attention now to 00:07:36 how can, how can we do it better? We've been trying to do that the entire way. But when you just label it as well, they must be bad 00:07:42 because chemicals are bad or GMOs are bad, then we're just taking tools off of, out of our, out of our toolbox there where we can't use them. 00:07:52 And that might, what we talked about a lot last week was when we just labeled this one thing as bad 00:07:57 and saved by government fiat, that you're not gonna be able to use that anymore. Well, that throws everything into chaos. 00:08:03 And what's that, what's it gonna look like when you take all these tools out? We are naturally, and, and, and use the word evolution. 00:08:09 We're, we're evolving with our understanding about how to do things better. Whether it's understand the soils understanding of, of, um, 00:08:16 just crop nutrition in general, understanding of, of different interactions with between d diseases and insects and fertility. 00:08:24 We're always learning how to do things better. And we're naturally doing that. Kelly is a perfect example of that. 00:08:29 There's farmers all over this country. A lot of them, I would say probably more like majority of them are trying to do things better. 00:08:35 Um, so we're already going, we're already going that way. That's, that's the point. I wanna talk more about 00:08:40 how we're already going that way with this concept of regenerative and what Kelly's doing. I think that, I think people are gonna be really, uh, um, 00:08:47 especially not people that are not in the agricultural industry are, should be really, uh, 00:08:54 optimistic about the way farming is going right now and, and what farmers are learning 00:08:58 how we're, how we're moving forward with this thing. About, about a year and a half ago, little less than that, uh, I'm at Kelly's, 00:09:04 um, farm, and he is hosting a whole bunch of people that were there. And they, um, they were, 00:09:08 they were the furthest thing from AG people, and they were the furthest thing from Iowa. I mean, you people from, uh, uh, fashion, fashion types, uh, 00:09:15 from Europe and, um, folks that worked for large corporations in places like, uh, Seattle and Portland, so to say that they were. 00:09:22 Uh, but, but they came and they listened and they obviously came with preconceived notions. Um, and they had this idea that a guy like, uh, 00:09:32 Kelly is out there, his cowboy hat on and running around dumping chemicals out the back of the F-150, whatever. 00:09:40 And he started talking about what's really happening. And it was really interesting to see, because there's an honesty to it. 00:09:47 And he said, yeah, we still use these, these products. Oh, but GMO says, yeah, we don't even, we don't even use genetically engineered corn anymore. 00:09:53 And it's not for the reasons that you think, it's not because you protested outside of, outside of, uh, the, uh, you know, the Washington Monument. 00:10:00 We did it because what makes sense for our operation, and I like that it's happening, I get a little concerned, um, uh, about the idea that the government's gonna tell us 00:10:10 how to do this when it's already happening on forward linking farms like yours. So talk about your, your journey to regenerative. 00:10:16 'cause I told you at that thing, Kelly, I said, you know what? A regenerative purist would bristle that. 00:10:21 You're calling yourself regenerative. You're a journeying into regenerative, but a purist might not think that you're 00:10:30 as region as you should be. And that's where you start getting to this thing of, I'm more organic than you. 00:10:34 I'm more pure than you, or whatever. I, I think that a purist does what Josh said earlier, where they paint one thing bad. 00:10:43 Yeah. Uh, and another thing good, I think that a purist believes that there's a black and white decision. 00:10:49 There's not, I'm simply trying to find a way to educate myself for what's best for my farm and my region and, and what's, what's best for Temple And Maryland, 00:10:59 you know, not too far from Josh or Chad and Alabama is completely different. Potentially some 00:11:04 of the things different than what's good here. And in, in some of the ways we're going away from synthetics and other ways, we, you know, we do, we, uh, 00:11:13 we don't use much traded corn anymore because we get a better yield out of the untreated corn, but we run insecticide on every acre. 00:11:20 You know, there's a synthetic, things like that. I'm trying to do what makes my farm most profitable and maintain the soil health, uh, or, 00:11:28 or build the soil health. And that's a, a purist would tell you, you shouldn't run the insecticide. 00:11:33 And purist would tell you all those things. It's not black and white. And I, I think that with, you know, soils the like space, 00:11:41 the final frontier, we know so little about it. Mm-Hmm. And, and we, we have forgot so many concepts of, of, again, back to pre-World War II 00:11:50 and the synthetic fertility came about. I think there's a lot of lost practices, the lost art of farming, if you will, that we need to relearn 00:11:58 that can take us to the next yield level and then, uh, obviously will take us to the next profit level. 00:12:04 Josh, you don't talk much. You talk a lot about G Organic and GMOs and, and, uh, chemistry and the use of science and et cetera. 00:12:12 You don't get into soil much. And that's where this regenerative thing that I give them credit, I, I picked up Gabe Brown's book, 00:12:19 dirt to Soil several years ago. I've had him on this, uh, on my show, the Business of Agriculture. 00:12:24 I've met him personally and heard him speak. He, and the regenerative thing sort of is a soil focused farming, uh, concept. 00:12:34 And I guess that's why I'm so open to it and am and, uh, a cheerleader for it because it, it starts with soil. 00:12:42 And uh, that's one thing you didn't really get into over here. I'm sorry. Um, that's book number two, I guess. 00:12:51 No, no. I mean, but it's interesting. So I, like you, you mentioned earlier, I, I wasn't born into this farming thing, 00:12:57 but I got done my master's in genetics sitting at a lab bench. I was like, I can't do this anymore. 00:13:01 So I got a job as a crop scout with a local ag retailer, um, here in Maryland and just wanted 00:13:06 to learn about farming 'cause it was outside. And, um, I learned a lot through that process. And I've actually been in a territory, 00:13:13 and I, I talked to you about this example. Uh, my farmers and I were always trying to do what was best on their farm. 00:13:19 That was my role on their operation. And it was different for every single guy. They had different yogas, they had different soil types, 00:13:26 they had different, um, some had animal, a animals, uh, on their farm, some didn't. We had to work with each sit, each individual, um, 00:13:36 as a, as an individual. And I think that's farming in general. But we were, I I, 00:13:43 I said this one example in Maryland, this kind of goes to what the, when the government and, 00:13:48 and some people think that they know what's best for the environment or for farms or for agriculture, they started to really push the idea 00:13:54 of cover crops. And we were already getting into that kind of naturally in Pennsylvania 00:13:59 and Maryland to a degree, um, learning what cover crops could do for an operation. Whether it was, um, increasing, you know, nitrogen, whether, 00:14:09 whether it was helping break up some soil compaction with radishes, whether it was, uh, trying to increase soil tilt, whether we're trying 00:14:16 to add organic matter to the soil. We were learning some of that when Maryland, because we're Maryland is what it is, they were like, 00:14:23 no government's gonna help you do this. So they gave money for farmers to plant cover crops. And the inevitability of it was that the farmers would say, 00:14:31 okay, well, I'm getting this money to plant cover crops. They planted the least amount that they could, 00:14:35 that they had to plant to get the check. They put it in the very last day that they were allowed to put it in because they had other things going on, 00:14:41 and they didn't learn how to do it. They, and not every farmer, I'm not trying to cas farmers. I'm cascading the, the, the process in general 00:14:49 that when we say that government gets involved, I, uh, it drives me nuts. So in Maryland, they were, 00:14:56 they had this whole program here to save the bay. We're gonna plant cover crops. And it didn't go well because nobody learned which cover 00:15:01 crops to plant, when to plant 'em, how much to plant in what rotation. Pennsylvania didn't get any money for it. 00:15:05 And those cover crops took off because we're really learning how this works in individual, uh, farmers' rotations, we're increasing yield, becoming, 00:15:14 we're increasing, um, you know, the, the overall soil health of things. And I think that goes 00:15:21 and paints a picture of what farmers, what, what they naturally do. They learn how to work with their soils and their farms. 00:15:27 We're learning more through this regenerative process. What that means. That's the direction we need to keep promoting and pushing. 00:15:34 Uh, education. Let farmers take the lead on this because it's their ground. It's their land, they know it best. 00:15:40 Um, and, and experts that can come in can help learn along the way. We don't need to get into politics of it again today, but, 00:15:48 but when somebody, you know, big Brother says, no, you have to do it this way, that's when things go awry. 00:15:53 Yeah. I wanna get into that and I wanna talk about cover crops because we're talking about Kelly's evolution 00:15:57 that I think more farms are going to do, and I hope they do. And again, if you're, if you're a hardcore, you know, 00:16:01 if you're one of these guys on Till to Twitter that wanted to fight with me about how, you know, tillage and, 00:16:07 and letting your soil blow away is great. I fine. Great. Uh, hang up. Uh, anyway, uh, 00:16:13 before we get to all that, I gotta remind you that Nature's is, uh, one of our, uh, friends here at Extreme Ag 00:16:19 and Nature's is focused on providing sustainable farming solutions and helping maintain crop genetic potential 00:16:25 for today and for your future generations. Nature's high quality liquid fertilizers, powered by nature's, by Okay, can be targeted at specific periods 00:16:32 of influence throughout the growing season via precision placement techniques as a means to mitigate plant stress, 00:16:37 enhanced crop yield, and also more importantly, boost your farms. ROI, you just h heard it from Kelly. 00:16:43 Big, big decline decreases in amount of synthetic fertility, fling it out there in the fall. 00:16:48 Don't do that much anymore. Using products like Nature's and putting it at nutrition exactly where it needs to be, 00:16:54 when the plant needs it and you get a big environmental benefit, you get a big economic benefit. 00:16:58 Go to Nature's dot com and check it out. I wanna just point out that I, I wasn't criticizing his book for not having more of a soil reference. 00:17:06 He took it that way. And then, you know what he did, you know, a guy over here with four degrees and letters after his name, he used the word castigate twice in three 00:17:14 and a half years of recording the extreme ag, cutting the curve. You were the first guest to use the word castigate. 00:17:18 Not just once, but twice. That duly noted. There you go. Alright. Um, your journey to the Regener thing. 00:17:27 First off, I would say Kelly was just figuring out how to use less. And you've done re you've done your nitrogen reduction, uh, 00:17:34 studies where you go out and and reduce that. That's, that's the path toward regenerative. You've done a thing where you cut way back on dry 00:17:41 fertility, that's regenerative. You are one of the few ex extreme ag people. You and temple are the only two that have livestock, 00:17:47 livestock factors into this as part of the soil cycle. Kind of talk to me about where the first was cutting back on 00:17:54 the spend and the inputs. The second was then focusing on the soil from what I've seen from my three and a half years with you. 00:18:00 Am I right about that? And then I want you to talk about how you're bringing the cattle into it. 00:18:04 Yes. The, the soil is the key. Um, you know, a a friend of mine, I, I would like to work more with him. 00:18:10 His name's Al Tubes. He told me that the key is in the soil and that the plant is secondary. 00:18:15 We always worry about the crop we're raising, things like that. Al's point was, if you can figure out the soil, 00:18:21 the plant will take care of itself. It very much is secondary. And I had a really hard time wrapping my head around 00:18:26 that still don't know that I totally can, but if I, if I do a good job in the, with the balance of the soil, then the plant is secondary 00:18:34 and it just kind of happens on its own, happens naturally. You know what I, and we, 00:18:39 we do still supplement the plant in a foliar process, things like that. Sometimes, uh, some, some elements 00:18:46 or nutrients that we need to use become tied up in the soil so fast and so easily that we still need to treat the plant 00:18:53 to, to achieve those higher yields. But yeah, I, I very much am about the soil, the cattle, you know, like, uh, the, the, 00:18:59 where I'm sitting here in my office, this farm had cattle on a very extensively, you know, in the January and February, 00:19:05 you know, it's cold and snowing. We need to feed the cows. We fed 'em a lot in this field. Not coincidentally, it's one of our highest yields. 00:19:11 And it's, it's not, it's, some of it's because of the manure, but part of it is because of our no-till corn on corn, 00:19:17 that residue gets broken down from the cattle walking all the time. And, you know, carbon is neither the, the residue is carbon, 00:19:25 obviously carbon is neither created nor destroyed. It's just transferred. And the cattle are a carbon transfer device. 00:19:32 They speed it up and to, so to say that the cattle are not good for the atmosphere, I'm not trying to be political, 00:19:38 but to say that cattle are not good for the atmosphere or the environment is really kind of b******t. Yeah. Right. Well, 'cause they are good, 00:19:44 because they speed up the transfer of the carbon. And that's what happens on our farm. Our best yields are where the cattle stay the longest. 00:19:51 Not to mention, like you said, they, they help the tr the carbon transfer, not to mention they can take, uh, indigestible cellulose fiber 00:19:58 and turn it into protein, which humans can digest. Which Damien, can I ask Kelly a question? 00:20:03 Yeah, sorry. Um, I didn't wanna take your moderator. Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry. Job Here. Yeah, I didn't wanna take your 00:20:09 Cast eating me. I know I didn't. Hey, this is your, this is your, uh, this is your gig. I'm just, I'm just a guest on it. 00:20:15 So I Kelly, do you think it's easier to be regenerative when you have animals? Yes, Because that, that's, that's a question I have. 00:20:26 Uh, you know, people want you not to use synthetic fertilizers, but an alternative, I mean, you can, 00:20:34 if you can get your soils running, I guess amazingly well, and try to incorporate green manure in there 00:20:39 with cover crops and things like that. I, I mean, I guess at some point you eventually could, but the alternative is poop, right? 00:20:46 I mean, it's, it's animal poop. And, but that's also the thing that the people that I find that don't want you to use synthetic fertilizers, 00:20:54 they also don't want animals out there either. And it's, it's, it is this really hard thing where it's like, well, we can't reduce all these animals 00:21:01 and not have them out there and also not use any other fertility sources we need. There's this, this crazy, uh, um, one wanting everything. 00:21:10 It's very circular, very holistic, the animals, the plants, the soil back forth it in a lot of ways, Josh, this is a little, a little dreamy, 00:21:17 but, uh, agriculture, it, it's like the movie avatar come to life. You know, the connection to the earth, the connection 00:21:26 to the animals, things like that. I don't mean to sound dreamy about it, but it, it very much is when you, when you 00:21:32 What, what movie came to life? Avatar. Oh, Okay. Hey, I want to go out there and say, uh, uh, again on this, 00:21:39 we talked about the fusion and we called this episode. How and Why the regenerative, organic, and conventional farm practice will ultimately Fuse. 00:21:44 Let's talk about the struggle. The, it's not, it is not been hard for you. You've done it in bites. 00:21:51 The person that's that says, eh, I don't, that won't work here. By the way, Josh, you said you're not a farm guy. 00:21:56 It's been hard. A farmer's favorite thing to say, and Kelly will back me up on this. Remember, a farmer loves to tell everybody 00:22:03 that whatever they're doing is the best way to do it, and anything else won't work here. I've had to, yeah, it won't work here. 00:22:10 I've had, I've had people within the same township of my county tell me that that won't work here. Uh, well, it works a mile and a half down the road. 00:22:18 How does it not work here? So anyway, go ahead. What, what do people, how do you see the fusion happening? And, and will it, 00:22:25 Is that for me or Josh? You, the, I believe the fusion will happen because of financials, you know, well, 00:22:32 regulatory from the government, uh, programs from the government, which, you know, I don't necessarily like either. 00:22:37 The, the government requires when you put in a cover crop, they want you to use rye cereal rye. 00:22:42 I think that's the worst thing to use. And I think that's a lot of reason the farmers get turned off of it. 00:22:45 Yeah, cereal rye is something that, it's a four letter word here. I will not use it. Now, I do have a field drilled 00:22:51 to cereal rye that I will chop and, and I will remove it. But to have it as a cover crop, it's a scavenger. 00:22:58 It takes up a lot of nutrition, then it's hard to terminate, hard to get the crop. I've had a couple disasters on this regenerative journey, 00:23:05 figuring that out, uh, greatly reduce the cornea. And now I very much believe in cover crops, but not cereal rot. 00:23:12 So I would tell you that it, it's not been easy, uh, because we've stubbed our toe. I'm just very stubborn. 00:23:18 Well, That, that is what farmers say though, is that it won't work here. You know, like, no-till won't work here. 00:23:24 Cover crops won't work here. Things like that. I, I think you just need to learn what works in your geography. 00:23:30 But the word won't is again, black and white, and that nothing is ever black and white. No. And, and usually it's just an excuse 00:23:37 to continue doing what they wanna do. I mean, you hear that all the time. So, um, by the way, you are right. 00:23:42 It, it, I predict this fusion. Absolutely. It's already happening. I mean, that's why it's not hard to say it's gonna happen. 00:23:48 It already is happening. So for instance, you can say, well, I'm not doing anything organic. Well, you're being encouraged to, to reduce your, uh, 00:23:58 and it's gonna be either by government, uh, regulation as you said, or it's gonna be because of the economics. We're heading into some pretty, some pretty down economics. 00:24:06 I would think that of all times you would be open to beginning your journey toward regenerative. Cut back on all the chemistry. Right Now, 00:24:14 Envision this, we're in a down economic time from the commodity markets and we're, you know, a little frustration because we haven't heard any more news on the 45 Z tax 00:24:22 credit, probably because of the election. They're gonna pun it until after the election. So we're in a down economic time. 00:24:28 We get through the election and 45 Z comes out. There's two economic factors that might push you to re reject because the 45 Z being all about a CI score, 00:24:37 CI score is the very definition of regenerative to me, because it forces you to go in that direction. So in a down economic time, we want a premium for our grain. 00:24:46 Here comes 45 Z We'll have to see what happens when we get through the election. But there's the financial, uh, encouragement 00:24:53 that you might need to make it happen. Dr. Miller, we just talked about what, what, how it's gonna happen, how we see it coming into being. 00:25:00 Um, you and I have already talked about this. This will be airing probably after the election, but we don't know. 00:25:05 RFK Junior is claiming that he's gonna be part of the USDA if this election goes a certain way. And if that's the case, he's gonna push 00:25:11 through a lot of stuff. I, I prefer carrots to sticks. Uh, I prefer letting the free market work on its own. But the United States Department of Agriculture 00:25:19 and its $213 billion annual budget is not going to probably do that. Uh, what do you see happening? 00:25:26 Well, what do I see happening that's really hard when you see what RFK Juniors says. This is a funny one, Kelly, 00:25:36 I don't know if you've seen this. He, he says that it will, we, we, we need to, and we will move to an organic 00:25:41 regenerative agricultural system. So he already says those two are the exact same thing. I don't even know what that means. 00:25:48 I don't know what that means. Which thing anon Uh, someone was trying to get a hold of me. I'm sorry, I just pulled in. Kelly, I looked at my phone. 00:25:56 RFK Junior says, I wanna switch to a organic system. Quote. Yeah. Quote unquote, a reg organic regenerative system. 00:26:04 Oh, okay. So he's putting them both in the same he's he's using, because those buzzwords work for suburbia, 00:26:10 even though they're actually two, not even the same things. Regenerative doesn't say regenerative practices don't 00:26:16 say you can't use chemical. Gabe Brown in his very book says, you gimme the choice between using chemistry or tillage. 00:26:22 I'll use chemistry. He's, he's more of a fan of chemistry than of tillage. Gabe Brown is, um, and organic tills the s**t outta stuff. 00:26:30 I mean, so, um, so organic and regenerative or technically fairly different, fairly disparate practices To me. And if you could 00:26:37 make that leap to be organic and regenerative, all the more better. 'cause I was listening to, uh, 00:26:43 and we were just talking about this beforehand. Was it Rick Clark? Uh, RFK Jr. Did a, a podcast with Rick Clark, 00:26:49 and he's this big regen guy, 7,000 acre farmer in Indiana. And it was pretty fascinating. He, 00:26:54 he sounds a lot like you, Kelly. Um, you know, he said his whole thing is, I wouldn't say my system is right for everybody. 00:27:01 You need to see what's good for you. You need to take your time with it. You need to learn how to do things. 00:27:07 I mean, I think RFK heard that and said, and, and just completely forgot everything that Rick Clark said about taking 00:27:13 your time and learn how it works with you. He just heard the word regen and organic together because Rick Clark is also organic, 00:27:19 but he is talking about the economics of it, why it's working for him. He was talking about, uh, bids that he had on, 00:27:24 on his soybeans for $40 a bushel. I bet. Yeah. I can make a lot of things work for $40 a bushel, but okay, let's say everybody moves that way. 00:27:34 What are we are, is everybody getting $40 a bushel for their soybeans? Then what does that do to the costs of, 00:27:40 of us everyday consumers that are buying the, the byproducts of, of those crops? 00:27:44 I think that we don't often think about all the unintended consequences. Some people have really kind of chiseled out this niche 00:27:51 that they can grow organics. And we live in a society where we're affluent enough where we can buy organic food, good for us, good 00:27:58 for the guys that are, that are growing it, that can make that, that high margin on it. 00:28:02 But the way, the reason that we live in the society we do is we have cheap food. If that food isn't cheap anymore, 00:28:09 because now it costs that much more to produce it because we're forcing everybody very quickly to cut out all the practices that have allowed 'em 00:28:16 to yield the way that they have to this point. And we're gonna tell everybody that they have to do a certain way that we haven't learned how to do it. 00:28:22 It all, it already doesn't yield as good as anything else overnight. We're gonna be in a, in a world of hurt as a consumer for 00:28:30 what that's gonna do to, to downstream prices in the grocery store and everything that we do. 00:28:35 Well, there's no question, uh, if, if it was by government decree that we have to completely upend how we've been doing things on, uh, you know, 00:28:43 360 million acres of, of farm farm to property far, you know, food producing land in the United States, it it could be catastrophic. 00:28:49 And we don't want that. I do think the fusion will happen. I my hope is that it happens. 00:28:54 My hope is that it happens more voluntarily or with a little bit of a carrot incentive, not by, uh, by vast sweeping and 00:29:03 Well, I'd say I, I'd go further, step further and say, I, I hope that people recognize that it's already happening 00:29:08 and highlighting people like Kelly and this Rick Clark and learning more about what they're doing and also giving credit for other, for people 00:29:16 that are already taking steps in that direction and can, and, and, uh, uh, encouraging people 00:29:22 to continue to take that direction. If people are now reducing tillage already, they're moving a no-till great, they're starting 00:29:28 to add cover crops into the, into their system, great. Let's, let's look at how we are already moving that direction. 00:29:35 Encourage more people to move that way versus, Nope, none of that was good enough. Uh, you're gonna go all whatever we call regen tomorrow and, 00:29:44 and, and have to do it that way. Kelly, organic, like I said, the, the things about organic, they were, 00:29:48 they were always big on, for instance, using manure and, and, uh, and some cover cropping. 00:29:53 They just have to be over overboard on tillage. And they also use chemistry, even though people think organic means no chemistry. 00:29:59 They use outdated chemistry because it was believed to be safe, or they use stuff like copper sulfate. 00:30:04 And so, you know, I've seen examples of organic properties that are so copper poisoned. 00:30:10 Uh, you know, so try to convince me that that's good to the environment. The first thing you do is reduce toward and regenerative, 00:30:17 and then obviously you're doing stuff with cover crops, and then you're doing stuff with the cattle on the soil front. 00:30:22 The biggest sin that I see, the person that should dabble into some level of regenerative is protecting the soil instead 00:30:29 of tilling the hell out of it. And what I see in your neighborhood is still too much tillage, winter tillage, fall tillage. 00:30:34 I think that that's where the biggest sin is being made against all of this right now. Am I right? 00:30:39 Yes. There, there's a fair amount of tillage that, that goes on everywhere. Um, I I, I really like no-till 00:30:47 because I like it, well, number one in my heels with the erosion and things like that, the conservation, but the ability to allow that residue to rot 00:30:56 or break down naturally over time and return it to the earth as more fertility is, and this, you know, the plant food I spray the manure Josh 00:31:04 speaks about, we use manure as well, or this no-till stove. I, I don't like to bale cornstalk bales 00:31:09 because I wanna leave that k that the K that's in the cornstalks, I wanna leave it out there. I wanna allow it to break down. 00:31:16 It's the fertilizer that comes back. It's the good fertilizer, if you will. I, I believe that in, in Neil Kinzie's book, when a plant, 00:31:23 when a nutrient has been through a plant once, it's 10 times more available to the next plant. That's why manure, the cornstalk residue, 00:31:31 the plant food is a superior, superior fertility product to me too synthetic. 00:31:35 Now, if you don't have the ability to have manure or something like that, and you have to use some synthetic, I agree. 00:31:41 I, I don't think that that's wrong. You have to do what's best for you. But that's the reason that I have made strides to move in 00:31:47 that direction because we see a yield benefit from it. And an ROI benefit from Dr. Josh Miller. When 00:31:53 we talk about regenerative and organic and conventional fusing, a lot of people are gonna listen to this and say, well, that's cool 00:31:59 that Kelly's doing cover crops, reducing tillage and, and all that sort of stuff and having cows. But you still use a lot of chemistry answer. 00:32:06 The person says, how do you pull chemistry out of the equation? Because obviously your, your book, you've, 00:32:12 you've talked about chemistry, uh, you've talked about how zealots like RFK Jr, every time he refers to chemistry, 00:32:19 he calls it toxic chemicals. Yeah. He never says beneficial chemistry. Yeah. My question be why do we need 00:32:27 to remove the chemistry from the equation? Um, because you're right, he says toxic chemicals. Well, He would tell you chemical. Well, 00:32:34 he would tell you because there's glyphosate and fruit loops. That's why he would tell you. Yeah. Well, he, for those that don't know, he is the one 00:32:41 that, that sued Monsanto the first time won that big case in California for $289 million. So like he is the one that has taken this fight to, 00:32:50 to the agricultural industry, um, and has found these, you know, kind of liberal, uh, judges and, and juries that that will rule in his favor. 00:33:00 Um, I went into length and it got really dry, and I apologize for those that, that were able to get through the regulation part of it. 00:33:07 But I wanted to let everybody know the, the regulatory process that goes into bringing a new chemistry to market. 00:33:15 You and I both talked at length about DDT and how amazing it was at the chemistry. It would never get labeled today 00:33:20 because we used to want chemicals that would kill, or if it was an insect side, we wanted something that was gonna kill every insect 00:33:26 and last as long as possible. That's just not the way that we do things anymore. It needs to be as selective as possible 00:33:31 to only kill the one thing that you wanted to kill and be so low persistence that it only lasts for as long as it needs to last. 00:33:39 That's the way that chemistry works today. There's all the, the things we can talk about with risk up. We've, we've reduced the, uh, the risk tolerance 00:33:47 that we have in this country, um, for a good, for good. This is a good thing. We've reduced risk tolerance so much that the, the standards that chemicals have to meet 00:33:57 to be registered today, there's no other word to say it than that, that they must be, that they are safe. 00:34:04 They've been tested through every which way you can think of from environmental to human health 00:34:08 to every other standard you can think of. And we're using 'em because we need them. Right. So, so my, my question would be, okay, well people want, 00:34:17 they, they want these toxic chemicals out of, of, um, out of their food. I would challenge 'em to, to let me 00:34:24 show me why they're toxic. One, how are they toxic? Um, and then what's the alternative? I I, I would say that they're safe. 00:34:32 Um, because the process, one more thing. This has always been a cooperative, uh, process as well. When we, when we talked about the, the fifth row, the, 00:34:44 the fun side, uh, inception side. Yeah. Rodenticide act, um, um, when that first came and the food quality, this has always been a cooperative 00:34:54 endeavor from environmental groups, from, from, uh, policy makers, from the farm group. And it was always a cooperative 00:35:02 and a collaborative effort to make sure that they're producing the most safe food. This has been a co collaborative 00:35:08 and cooperative process since World War ii since we started this thing. But now it's, it's, there's a good guy 00:35:13 and a bad guy all of a sudden because we have, you know, zealots that, that want to say no my way's. 00:35:19 Right. You're bad. You're, you're polluting, you're creating toxic chemicals. You're killing all of our, our children. 00:35:26 Yeah, whatever, whatever have you, Kelly, Are you gonna, are you gonna be able to farm without chemistry 10 years from now? 00:35:32 We are trying to move in that direction a little bit. It its not because, um, because I feel that I have to, but we, we do feel that, you know, the, the dry years 00:35:42 of say 21, 22 and 23, we feel that, you know, the, the rotation of crops is good. However, the rotation of the chemistries for the bean 00:35:50 and corn, you know, they're saying, well, this is that it's the crop safety. Well, we feel that there's some atrazine carryover. 00:35:57 We feel that there's some PPO carryover. A PPO is the bean pre that we use. We feel that it hurts the corn next year in a dry year. 00:36:04 Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. And, and so next year will probably be a hundred percent corn. Maybe that will go down some, the, the chemical carryover. 00:36:11 But we we're working to go away from that. Uh, we would like to use, uh, more of a dicamba type product as the residual in our corn. 00:36:20 And one of the things we're gonna try next year is an annual rye, which is different than cereal rye at like, 00:36:26 say V four corn. We're gonna try to drill, not drill, we're gonna try to broadcast annual rye, turnips, 00:36:33 and radishes as our cover crop in V four corn. We're gonna, and, and, uh, tj, my cover crop guy from bio tail has talked about this. 00:36:42 And so we need to use a, a residual product with a shorter tail is how he talks about it. So then we can get the cover crops to come up. 00:36:50 The cover crops should give us some compaction relief, should give us some erosion control, and they'll give us some weed suppression. 00:36:56 And if we can make that happen, then we'll be, we will be farming with less chemicals because of the weed suppression that they will offer. 00:37:04 Uh, he's talked about people doing it in southern Minnesota, things like that because by, you know, the co you know, 00:37:09 the further you get north of me, the colder environment, you can't get cover crops to work after harvest. 00:37:13 You have to do it. The challenge will be when we broadcast them, how do we get 'em to come up? 00:37:17 You know, it was gonna take a rain to get it to come up and what, so what sort of germination are we gonna get? He's talked to me about people going out with a hoe 00:37:24 and kinda like tilling him in very lightly. I refuse to do that. That's gonna be hard on my corn stand. That's not gonna work for me. No. 00:37:31 And so if I can make those cover crops work, we do want to turn down the chemicals and, but the reason is, is we are seeing a chemical 00:37:38 carry over that's hurting the yield. Yeah. Again, it always goes back to ROI for me. Yep. I, I, by the way, I like that. 00:37:46 The point is, and, and we can do these practices, uh, what have we when we look at this future and you didn't like being a future predictor, Josh, 00:37:54 but, uh, but I do. Okay. I think there's gonna be programs, there's gonna be government programs, 00:37:59 there's gonna be more of that. I am absolutely convinced of it. And someone's gonna be, again, carrot, someone's gonna be sticks. 00:38:04 Someone's gonna be like, you have no choice but to file a sustainability program. I'm, I'm convinced that's coming in the next farm Bill, 00:38:10 probably or two. Um, when these things happen, they're not gonna outlaw chemistry. I think the, the benefit the road 00:38:18 to regenerative is gonna be mostly about soil. I hope it's about soil health, and that would mean reduction of tillage. 00:38:27 But old habits die hard. Uh, again, just go to Twitter and you got people that, uh, by God they're gonna go out there 00:38:32 and till, till, till cultivate until, until they can't anymore. What do you think about, oh yes, Shelly. 00:38:38 I I think it already exists. I, i if the, uh, if, if the Democrats get elected, I believe that there will be more government programs if 00:38:47 the Republicans get elected. I believe, uh, I'm ho I'm not trying to be over optimistic, but I believe 45 Z is the carrot that you talk about. Oh 00:38:55 Yeah. Because the lower you get the CI score, the higher the premium your corn's gonna be worse. Therein lies your government program. 00:39:01 Therein lies your carrot right there. You need to reduce tillage. Uh, the use of manure versus commercial. 00:39:07 P and k lowers these 12 points right there. There's a lot of money in J 12, 12 points on 200 bushel corn's worth $132 an acre. 00:39:14 It's on my whiteboard right here. I like that. I like that. So it's gonna be incentive based. 00:39:20 It's gonna be incentive laden. That takes us to regenerative. Probably not all the way to organic. Um, organic. 00:39:25 I'll throw it out there, Josh. I think we're already capped out the market's, the market's absorbed about. 00:39:30 We organic's been a thing for about 20 some 30 years, I think we're, it, it tends to not be growing anymore. I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it was, 00:39:39 the organic food consumption was growing at 30% a year or something like that. It's leveled off. Am I right? 00:39:46 I hope so. I hope so. I think the free market, yeah, I think you're right. I think the free market is kind 00:39:52 of capped off what we can do. It would have to be other, other influences that kind of drive it that way, 00:39:59 Which becomes forced. And until it's forced and like, like you and I have talked about, I don't like to predict the future 00:40:04 and I feel like I've been like the doomsday guy here on this one. Sorry for Kelly and Damon, all your listeners. 00:40:10 I feel like I'm just like Mr. Negative over here, but we've had a lot worse. We've we've had a lot worse guests on than you. 00:40:16 I mean, seriously. It's fine. Okay, good, good. Well thanks for that reassuring, um, statement. But we've seen in 2021, like we, we talked about 00:40:26 Sri Lanka tried this, and this is a big, big push in other areas. And we, we haven't gotten into global agriculture. 00:40:30 We don't need to do that today. But I feel like that's where the biggest sins of this forcing people to do things a certain way is happening. 00:40:36 But Sri Lanka was an example. We said 2021, they said we we're buying in this ESG movement, we're gonna be completely organic, 00:40:46 synthetic fertilizer free. Yep. They said it mandate, government mandate. They couldn't use chemicals. 00:40:52 The next year, agricultural product productivity went down, I think 55% or something like that. 00:40:56 Or maybe that was the economic productivity overall. There was economic collapse and the president of the country had to flee the country 00:41:02 because there was revolt in the streets to get rid of him because he basically destroyed the country. 00:41:06 Because we let the ideology drive know this is the right thing. Everybody says this is the right thing to do. 00:41:12 Um, no, I think what Kelly's doing is amazing. And, and people like Rick Clark and people like Gabe Brown, these guys are, 00:41:18 are doing the hard work for the rest of us out there to learn from, um, so that we can learn from their errors so we can do things better. 00:41:27 There are simple things that we're gonna have to get rid of, uh, or, or the first things 00:41:31 to go like the tillage like we've talked about. Um, but there's, there's a lot cooler things to come that make this whole system work. 00:41:39 And not everybody's gonna do those things. Not everybody's gonna try to broadcast cereal or, or annual rye into standing corn. 00:41:46 That's really cool. We play with a lot of cover crops in Pennsylvania and try to seed them earlier in the 00:41:50 season in the standing crops. And, and we had some success. We had a lot of failures too. That's the thing that's gonna drive this thing forward. 00:41:57 Incentives are gonna do it because right now we're in this just flat commodity crop right now. 00:42:02 It's just about how low can I get my inputs and how high can I get my yield to maximize that return on investment? 00:42:09 The incentives are either gonna be how can I do things in a more quote unquote, environmentally friendly way 00:42:16 or ci, whatever that's gonna be. Or how can I make some value in my crop better? How can I quantify the protein? 00:42:23 How can I quantify some nutritive value of my crop and, and have, uh, uh, have a premium on it that way? I think those are the two ways that we're gonna see people 00:42:33 try to do more in their crops. Those two incentives. We had a stick and then we all fail. We said at the beginning, we said the how 00:42:40 and the why of how these things all fused together, uh, region in organic and conventional fuse together. We just, you just addressed it. 00:42:47 The how it you went through it. You started cutting back on, uh, on inputs and chemistry in particular, and then you try to grow more 00:42:54 and then you way cut back on fertility, applied synthetic fertility. Those are all steps toward regenerative. 00:43:00 And then obviously cycling the cows into it. Then you went the why, why it's gonna happen. Well, it could be regulatory also. 00:43:05 It's because of the economics. Um, some people right now are gonna use this slowdown in commodity prices. 00:43:10 That's an excuse not to do it. Whereas you would say it's the time to do it. I think do we cover the why It's 00:43:17 gonna happen because of the economics. It's gonna happen because of re uh, because of regulatory. Is there any other reason why people finally just care about 00:43:23 their, uh, they care about their soil and they don't wanna just till the hell out of it and let it blow away? Is that the other reason? 00:43:28 Well, I, I, I think there's more education, there's more understanding. You know, we, we continue to evolve and understand better 00:43:34 and we understand the value of it, and then the value of the land. You know, you, uh, we don't want 00:43:39 to have waste ground anymore because it's worth $15,000 acres worth 10,000 acres or 25,000 an acre, whatever region you live in. 00:43:46 Yeah. You know, and so the value of the land and then the value of the soil health, again, as long as we continue to try to learn 00:43:54 and educate ourselves, we will, we'll keep going, um, in a direction to try to get better. And, and that's, I think, I believe 00:44:02 that's why we understand the value of the soil and the value of the carbon sequestered in. Hmm. Yeah. I guess I think the, 00:44:08 the regenerative is where we're really going. Not so much the organic, we'll grab a few of the organic practices, manure, usage, cover cropping, 00:44:15 but it's regenerative where I, I that's where we're really going. I, I, I completely agree. 00:44:21 Uh, I, I would tell you that if you have a market for your organics and your ROI is better, I think that's, I think that's great that, that I can't accomplish that. 00:44:29 So I try to do a blend. Uh, to me the a a regenerative is a blend of the conventional and the organic practices to, to come up 00:44:38 with what's, what's most profitable for me. I agree. His name's Kelly Garrett. He's one of the original founders of Extreme 00:44:44 Ag joined by Dr. Josh Miller. Josh Miller wrote the book, peeling Back the Labels. 00:44:48 He's here as a guest. He might come back again 'cause we like hearing from him. Uh, and yes, get bored Word of the Day. 00:44:55 Just go ahead and dictionary, uh, app in your phone and put in castigate. It's a great word. Anyway, thanks for being here, Josh. 00:45:03 Thanks, Damian. Until next time, thanks for being here. You can check out the entire library of content just like this. 00:45:09 Everything from the agronomics to the seed selection, to the equipment, to the finances, to anything that happens on your farming operation. 00:45:16 We have recorded three and a half years worth of extreme acts cutting the curve. Literally hundreds and hundreds of episodes like this. 00:45:21 Also videos with guys like Kelly at their field days at events that they shoot. Sometimes I'm there with them. 00:45:26 Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of videos all designed with one specific purpose to help you farm Better go check 00:45:31 it out@extremeag.farm. So next time, thanks for being here. I'm Damien Mason with extreme Ag cutting the curve. 00:45:36 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out 1200 00:45:44.565 --> 00:45:46.085