Can Conventional, Regenerative & Organic Practices Actually Get Along? | The Granary

00:00:00 How conventional organic and regenerative farming practices are all going to eventually merge in the future of production agriculture. 00:00:07 That's what we're talking about with my cast here in the greenery. I'm ready for a conversation 00:00:11 with some real farmers about real issues. And the best part, you are invited, support yourself a drink, grab a snack. 00:00:20 Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the greenery. Hey guys. 00:00:32 Alright. You heard the topic. I believe that, uh, regenerative practices are catching on a little more promptly than I predicted that they would. 00:00:40 You and I both, uh, read Gabe Brown's book, dirt the Soil. Um, it was only a few years ago, 00:00:46 and I see a lot of elements of this and because I think there's a focus on soil health, this is a topic custom made for you 00:00:52 because you've said my sustainable path and my high yield path are converging because they're not mutually exclusive. 00:00:59 Praxis go. They, They're not mutually exclusive. And I used to think, uh, uh, as a younger farmer, even when we started extreme ag, you know, 00:01:08 and I was wanting to raise 400 bushel corn, I thought it took more and more fertility. I thought we had to basically buy that yield. 00:01:15 It doesn't work. I've learned that from Chad. I've learned that from Temple. It doesn't work. You can't buy that yield. If, 00:01:20 if you could put out enough fertilizer to raise 400 bushel corn, we'd all do it just to say we've done it's four 50. 00:01:25 There you go. So you got a great story about that. You went and, and one of your experiments was you put on excessive amounts 00:01:31 of fertility as though truly like this is what it would take to get four 50 bushels. 00:01:37 You didn't get it. And so it does tell you that the idea that sustainability practices somehow, um, 00:01:45 are anti yield. Well, the converse of that is excessive amounts of inputs don't create yield. I, well, you 00:01:51 Know, we've heard people say a lot of times, you know, we've, we've for years entered these NCGA contests, these high yield contests, and they, 00:01:57 and they're not a thing where you brag. What they are is there's a, there's a lot of farmers that do a lot of research and we just try to Yeah. 00:02:04 You know, put that in and, and, and maybe gain a little bit of money back and then gain also a lot of knowledge from it. 00:02:09 It's our research and development is what it is. So when, when we, when we talk about those things, you know, people think, oh, well I can make 500 bushel. 00:02:17 It's just, it's just not feasible. You know, I won't make any money at it. No. You can't even make it like I'm, you can't, I mean, 00:02:22 I'm not going to tell you there's a gr handful of farmers that's made 500, you know, and it's not 00:02:27 because that they went out there and just dumped a bunch of fertilizer on. I mean, they, any of 'em would tell you that. 00:02:31 And you can't, you can't buy that. I mean, you just can't. It's like Kelly was talking about. 00:02:35 So, you know, that being said, we, we just we're trying to prove the point that, you know, maybe it takes a little bit of more 00:02:42 Just, and the, and the research and it, it's not, it's a high yield area, but it really is research. 00:02:47 You know, when you talk about their contests, I'll have seven or eight entries. I might only put in two of 'em. 00:02:52 'cause the research doesn't always work out. Yeah. But that's what we're trying to do. And nobody talks about, let's, let's make a category 00:02:57 for failed research i'd That's, I mean, let's back failed research. What, who made, who put the most in it, made the least. 00:03:04 Yeah. Oh, right. I hate You. So we're, we're always trying different things. 00:03:07 And it doesn't, it doesn't always work out. But what that research is leading me to believe is that all of that synthetic fertility doesn't buy that yield. 00:03:16 And, and I, and to go higher, I need to work in tune with Mother Nature, which is the hybrid between the two systems. 00:03:22 I was just thinking of a future episode of the Grainery Show, where it's just called Failed research. 00:03:27 And it's, it's a, so it's a solo episode. It's just Chad, just, just Chad sitting there saying, And you just need to start, and I'll just start talking. 00:03:34 You know, we'll talk the 30 minutes about just, I'll just keep talking. And That's just what he is done in the last year, 00:03:38 Since that was last year in 2023. This is what I've done On that thing. When you flinged 00:03:43 out excessive amounts of fertility, again, I think that the bigger illustration isn't, the bigger illustration isn't that, oh, well, 00:03:50 it's impossible to buy 450 bushel field no matter what other illustration, I think is it tells you that on the flip side, being completely 00:04:00 sustainable, regenerative, using less of these inputs, it makes it more plausible that obviously if, if excessive fertility doesn't get you here, 00:04:10 why would decreasing fertility somehow be a failure? And and that's where I think the future goes. Yeah. And I mean, we've all learned, I mean, 00:04:17 my NCGA two years ago was yielding less than outside of where I've like, spiced up a spot. You know, that block was a failure. 00:04:24 And it's a balance issue. Kelly says it all the time, you gotta keep things in balance. And nitrogen is definitely the fastest 00:04:30 way to get it out of balance. But at the end of the day, we all gotta learn from our mistakes. 00:04:34 Yeah. So we know what to do going forward. And that's why we all have test plots on all of our farms. It just to see what's working and 00:04:41 What's not. It's pretty amazing when you start and, you know, you're sitting there and you plant that crop and you just, you pour your heart into 00:04:46 it, and then it goes other way. And you, and then you look back on through the year, you know, and, and at the, at first glance, I promise you, 00:04:52 when you run the machine through it, at first glance you're p****d off. Yeah. Like, you're p****d off. 00:04:57 Johnny's called me like, I'm done with this mess. I'm done. And then, but as you start diving into it, 00:05:01 and you get one week behind you, or 10 days behind you, 20 days, 'cause you keep thinking about, you're 00:05:06 gonna think about it for a whole year. Yeah. And as you get behind you, you know, you start thinking about what you've learned. 00:05:10 And that's where we, this put us where we're at. I was thinking, um, No, Shouldn't. Okay. I shouldn't either. 00:05:16 Nevermind. Gabe Bros book says, uh, and this, this shocks a lot of people because obviously Regener Organic a pretty distant, I mean, 00:05:23 there there's, there's, there's a lot of disparity between the two of them. But he says, here's the thing. 00:05:27 He said, uh, a, a practice that relies on a lot of tillage is terrible. And we know that more now than we did 00:05:33 just a decade or so ago. That the degradation to soil structure and the PS and the, you know, the profile, all that stuff, 00:05:39 um, you stopped tilling. You Came Home from Murray State when you 44, 43, 42. Okay. So 20 years ago, you said, my dad 00:05:48 and I were no-till in the nineties. You didn't do it necessarily. 'cause you thought, oh, it's all about regenerative practices. 00:05:54 You did it as a conservation of moisture. Yeah, but the thing is, I look, I believe that agriculture still over tills by, 00:06:03 by double, by three times. Yeah. Where we are, we're, we're predominantly no till, or very minimal till is all we are. 00:06:08 But it is, from an erosion standpoint is why we're doing it. I those moisture, well, both. 00:06:12 I mean, it's gonna come in ha You know, if you get that resident top of the ground, that does hold moisture. But also we got some of the most erodable soil in the US so 00:06:19 we get excessive rainfall. It just, we'll wash the pieces. So even though it's not that hilly, even though it's not 00:06:24 that hilly, we are, it's texture. Yeah. The stilt and the sand separates and it's just a big mess. 00:06:28 So that's why we do it where we are. But at the end of the day, that're doing it for multiple reasons now, used to, it's just for erosion. 00:06:34 Yep. And now for moisture holding capacity and biology that's going on in the soil that we're trying to build and stuff like that, you know, matter. 00:06:41 Some of the best yields we can have is if some ground's been in CRP for 20, 30, 40 years Yeah. 00:06:45 And we can bring it outta CRP and not do a lot to it somehow, you know, sometimes you can get lucky. 00:06:50 The biology that's in that soil, you won't have anything that yields like that. You Know, supposed we have the same experience, you 00:06:55 Know, it's supposed to rest in a year. Right. Yeah. When every seven years you're supposed to rest a That's right. 00:07:00 It's tough To make. The bank doesn't allow that. Yeah, That's right. Make sure your bank wants that to happen. Um, 00:07:05 You think you could take That argument to the bank, you know, Hey, this was my rest here. Yeah. So, you know, unless you wanna go guess the Bible. 00:07:10 Yeah. You gonna need to. Yeah. When did you go and tell your old man, when did you come in and say, 00:07:15 we're gonna stop doing all this tillage, or we're going to plant no-till, we're gonna start doing the, I mean, when, 00:07:21 when did you start introducing this and what was Gene's reaction? My dad was actually the one that started 00:07:24 with no-till way back when I was 10, 12 years old. And we were no-tilling soybeans. You know, you were a 50 50 rotation then. 00:07:32 So we were no-till soybeans in the cornstalks Drill the drill probably back then Drill with a seven 50 no-till drill. 00:07:37 And we were drilling. We were drilling, uh, that's a lot of work. And we're, we're drilling, um, or not drilling. 00:07:43 We were no till the corn into the be stubble. Then, you know, when I started farming and we started with some corn on corn, we were tilling that. 00:07:50 And in 2012 we went to a hundred percent no-till. And but my dad has always been an advocate for that. He always, he didn't believe that he, 00:07:58 he believed it was wasting time and money. And he believed, you know, with our hills, the erosion. My dad has always been an advocate for that. 00:08:05 You started to strip till, which goes down the road of regenerative less reduced tillage. And, um, I thought it was new 00:08:12 because I just came to your field day a couple years ago. I thought it was the first year you doing it, 00:08:15 you said No, you've been doing it for more a decade. Yeah. Well, I'm, I guess seven, eight years or something. You know, and we've, our deal was, we, we, 00:08:21 we didn't need to work up all this soil. We knew that. Um, but yet we couldn't get with a, 00:08:26 with a little bit of rolling ground. We've got the heel would be just bone dry. Mm-hmm. And the bottom would still be heavy. 00:08:31 And we couldn't get planted. And you, and you was, when you're, when you're no-tilling, I mean, Johnny tell when you're no-tilling, there's that two 00:08:37 or three days that it's perfect. You know, it's always just perfect. And we couldn't, you know, 00:08:42 you couldn't plant a crop in that window. Yep. So we're looking at different avenues. And then we're looking also into ways to cut fertilizer, 00:08:49 to save money, um, to just till in a spot to never put any, you know, um, chloride, if you will, 00:08:55 or salt out in the middle where the biology, it's just, it's multiple things that we've looked into that, and that's kind of why we do it now. 00:09:03 Uh, about the merging. And I'll go around, we'll start with you, you, we talked about sustainability and high yield emerging. 00:09:09 Um, what are we going to take from organic? I, I, I know what I think. I think it's certainly they till the hell outta stuff 00:09:17 and they use too much diesel and they do a lot of stuff, but they always have been focused on, uh, 00:09:26 reduction of harsher chemistry. I think that we should probably take maybe reduction to yield. 00:09:32 Well, they do that too. Organic prices. No, they, they, you know, like, uh, in the organic spot, the way that they use cover crops, 00:09:38 the way they use the crop rotation, things like that, that that's the part to take out of organic. 00:09:44 Uh, you know, like, I don't wanna raise soybeans anymore, but I have the rye and the triche out there 00:09:47 to chop it, things like that. Um, this year we're gonna try some, uh, early planted cover crops. 00:09:54 Now I wanna do that because I wanna make the cover crop a revenue stream for the cattle. 00:09:58 But apart from the organic thing that you could be taking that early cover crop, what if someday 00:10:03 that minimalizes the post app, the post chemical application, or what if it even eliminates it? 00:10:07 I'm not suggesting that it will, but I'm sure I sure wanna find out. That's what I think we take from organic. 00:10:13 The, the, the chemistry and the covers. Yes. The use of covers instead of chemistry. Maybe What does organic lend to agriculture that maybe, 00:10:23 you know, you'll never probably be certified organic and there's a lot of reasons why. Uh, but one, you, what would you see you taking 00:10:29 or more of agriculture taking from organic? Well, I don't know if it's technically the way organic's working, but they're getting more value for their crops. 00:10:37 Yep. 'cause they're selling a certain way. And I think we've been talking the last year or so about how we're gonna be able 00:10:42 to get more quality in our grain, stuff like that. They're doing that to a certain extent. Their grain might not be a better quality, 00:10:48 but they're selling it as a premium product. We're gonna try to do the same thing. I think the future of that's where that's going. 00:10:53 That's fantastic. And you're learning from these guys here that have either failed 00:10:56 or been very successful with organic the last 10, 15 years. Absolutely. You brought that up at this very table. 00:11:01 A friend of mine lives farms over here in Northeastern part of the county as an organic guy. 00:11:05 And that was, uh, it's not because he is a zealot. It's because, um, he said the premiums, you know, you guys were selling $12 beans. 00:11:13 He was selling $30 beads because organic. So there's that. And nobody in ag knowing 00:11:20 how thin the margins are should ever ridicule Yeah. A way to get a new market, you know, to get it premium. Oh, Absolutely. Absolutely. 00:11:29 And I know they don't, they don't always have the best quality from start to finish, but they do have some premium on certain side. 00:11:35 I mean, insects can get into it. They have a lot of things that they fight that we might not, but if you watch what they do, they're trying 00:11:40 to sell a premium of some sort. And that's what we need to do too on our side. And I think we can, with the story that we're starting 00:11:46 to tell, how we're starting to farm from sustainability to regenerative ag, stuff like that, is gonna really play a big part into it in the future. 00:11:55 So, you know, when me and you first started talking about, uh, yields and things like that, you know, we, me 00:12:01 and you had discussion that I like to learn from the people who are in vegetables. Right? I mean, you gotta think outside the box. 00:12:08 And these organic guys definitely have to think outside the box, whether it's wheat control or straw or putting plastic down. 00:12:14 You know, there's a lot of things they've done to think outside the box. Uh, but on the same note, you know, they just, I like 00:12:20 to take one or two things from it. I just hope that, you know, I hope that we can give them something 00:12:25 and they can be open-minded about something. Because a lot of the guys that I get that are organic are just, I mean, 00:12:29 think I'm just killing their, you know, what kind of Preach. They kind of get a little preachy. Simple. 00:12:33 Hell, Man. But I think another thing to look at, we've all been conditioned the last 20, 30 years, maybe forever. 00:12:39 The way we've been farming is the more we make, the more money we make, the more yield we make, the more money we make. 00:12:43 So this, it's not that the true in that way. And that could be the future for us too. We might not make the highest yield, 00:12:47 but that the quality's good. The weight of the grain's good, that the nutrient value of that's good. 00:12:52 That's what we're gonna get paid on. Yes. And we don't have to make that 400 bushel. We might can make 300 to be the same money make hundred. 00:12:57 Yeah. Whatever it is. I mean, You know, Kelly talked about, you know, the last couple years we've talked about putting 00:13:02 CI scores mm-hmm. Or something, or into a grain or, or being able to yeah. Know what, what nutrient value is in that piece of grain. 00:13:09 You know, those, those things. And I mean, you're, you're sticking your head in the saying, I know that stuff ain't coming because 00:13:13 It affects, if we sell quality product to somebody that has cattle like Kelly, then what does it do to your mu meat? Wait, wait. 00:13:19 Yeah. You mean another cow? No one has cattle like Kelly. Yeah. I mean, his are very specific. 00:13:24 Temple does well, they're kind of crazy. And Matt Miles once said, uh, one of his bulls weighed 10,000 pounds, 00:13:31 almost ran him over big tough Matt, former college football player, uh, like an old cripple heifer walked by and he 00:13:39 He throw a shovel away. Yeah. He threw a shovel at it. Yeah. He could not drive decision making. 00:13:43 You said that a number of times. Um, you can make the case for the economic aspect that China's saying here, nutrient value or traceability 00:13:52 or environmental footprint. Uh, there are, and and a lot of us in ag think the consumer's cheap. 00:13:57 You know why? Because people in ag are cheap. We think everyone is cheap like us. And that's not true. There wouldn't be whole foods if there were. Yeah. 00:14:03 I think that the economics of it are going to make it so that you can derive a bigger value, even from corn. 00:14:10 But it's gonna be human grade corn and it's gonna have more, uh, betacarotene or something like this. 00:14:15 There's the corn that goes over the ethanol factory and there's the corn that goes to Consumption consumption. 00:14:20 I, I agree. And that will, that will be a part of regenerative will be play into that because that way we can tout its environmental, uh, bit lack 00:14:28 of environmental harm. Yes. You're looking, I feel like he was looking at him going The sustainability market 00:14:36 and the, you know, the potential inset market that is out there. You know, the things that we're trying to accomplish there. 00:14:42 Uh, the nutrient density piece that is potentially coming. All of those could create two different corn markets. 00:14:48 You know, you, you have the corn that goes into ethanol. You might have the corn that goes into cattle feed 00:14:52 because it has higher nutrient density to raise nutrient-dense beef, nutrient dense pork, chicken, all of those things. 00:14:58 Um, it really would be a diversification of the crop. What thing about organic are you never gonna adopt the peachy, the peachy mindset? Um, 00:15:06 Well, I tried not to. I, I've, I've tried to learn to say never say never, because every time I say never, 00:15:13 I'd be like, what'd I do next year? You be like, I'll be doing a video on it. We'll be like, oh, you need to get that. I'm like, I can't. 00:15:18 I can't, I can't. You know? Yeah. I I don't think you should ever say the words always or never, because that's the finite game. 00:15:24 Yeah. And we're just always trying to improve. And Then, you know, when you get, when you get hardheaded or stubborn enough, or think you've known enough 00:15:30 that you will say, oh, I'd never do what them guys do. But I think all of us would agree, going back 00:15:34 to true conventional till and working the ground six, seven passes is probably the first thing we would not want do. I can't 00:15:39 Imagine it would The labor of The equipment right now, I, right now that I work a, you know, I got probably a 00:15:45 thousand acres a year that we work. Just detail this. I'm talking about just gut to earth. You can smell the dirt, itt smoking biology, I'm kidding. 00:15:52 Biology every day. But then again, you have this whole point of let's just talk about organic matter. 00:15:57 Right. What'd they say? You can never raise your organic matter or years to raise your organic matter. Right. 00:16:02 I told you that. I you never raise your, I heard, I heard an alleged agronomy guy at a conference I spoke at get on stage and was doing a bunch of charts. 00:16:10 And he said this guy was revered. Everybody was writing nose down. He says, you'll never change your 00:16:15 organic matter in your lifetime. And I didn't think it made sense then. Dozen you guys. I mean, I'm, we're we're 20. 00:16:23 We hadn't had any cotton since oh six. Yeah. All right. So we're approaching 20 years. That's be The 20th season. Right. 00:16:28 Anybody that runs cotton in Alabama, that red dirt, it's very tough. I mean, you're gonna be looking at it from 00:16:33 a half, three quarters. Man. It's good if you have 1% are organic. Am I right? That's the same thing. Yeah. So it's 00:16:38 gonna be down there at it. I mean, cotton's a taker. It's a tree. So, but when, but when we started growing grain 00:16:44 and we, we put three crops in in two years, and we're putting all that stubble, we're not cutting any straw, you know, 00:16:50 or we're not barely a straw. We're not hauling off any corn stalks and stab stubble. You know, we putting that back in 00:16:56 and we're working it back in now. I don't know whether you left it there and it just died and, you know, we didn't have Uncle Bob then 00:17:01 you, we would've smoked it down. But, but if we, we worked that back in all of our organic matter. 00:17:06 Now, I don't know that I have anything under 2, 2 5. You've changed it a lot. Yeah. Two five. And some of it's up to 3 5, 3 8. 00:17:14 It took it 18, 19 years. It's 20 years. But I have tripled Four years to triple gonna, and that, 00:17:20 That dirt even a different color you said. Yeah, That's right. You know, know we've, and I've talked to Kelly about it 00:17:24 before, you know, especially when you first work it, you know how it is and it'll, and it'll kind of mellow down. And I'm not, I'm, I'm not saying that we work at Raker. 00:17:32 I'm just saying there's a spot forward that we have to, and you gotta understand how compacted our soils, again, you can put those radishes in it and they just grow up. 00:17:40 Yeah. Like there'll be this much radish sticking out. They'd be about that deep in the ground, you know, it just grows up, up top. 00:17:45 So by way, the takeaway from that is those are regenerative type practices that you didn't do, uh, 20 years ago. 00:17:53 And you're sitting chalking up to, first off getting off the cotton, um, because cotton's a, a, a real nutrient drain. 00:18:00 And then also, uh, so now you got a bunch of more biomass that you're putting back on the field and 00:18:04 then also reduction of two. And now, but, You know, we'll never grow any wheat better than growing it right behind cotton or right behind soybeans. 00:18:10 Yeah. So, I mean, there's, there's a, there's a, I mean, we used to have all three or four crops going, you know, 00:18:15 and there's nothing better than that rotation. And, but you know, with the price of cotton pickers now you kinda have 00:18:20 to pick whether you're gonna buy a grain be or you're gonna buy a cotton picker. 'cause it's the same thing. 00:18:23 But what I'm saying is, you know, where we teal at the next year, we may be strip teal, and in which we try to break that up to 00:18:30 where it's ever two or three years. But we just have so much compaction. It's, it's, You're just trying to break the compaction. We're just 00:18:35 Trying to break the compaction now. Maybe we're gonna Put some liquid. I want you to take a bull stand. 00:18:38 Say you'll either never or always do, do a never. So Do a never tell me a never. I'm gonna' need It. You'll never get 00:18:45 done. Marveling my intelligence. Yeah. That, that, that one. You'll never, always be amazed at how awesome I am. 00:18:51 Yeah. See, there you go. I just do it for you. Yeah. Gimme a never, I'll never work every acre up in one ear. I can tell you that. That's a good one. 00:18:58 You'll, I mean, do you always have to ground break plow? We do not own break and file. See? No. There you go. 00:19:03 So what do you call a raking pile? Turning pile? A old board plow. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. What about, um, on the, on the front of cover crops? 00:19:10 Why is it it still is only like less than 10% of crops get a, a cover crop? I think eight or seven of something like that. 00:19:16 I read it just in the last few. You don't, because everybody will tell you, oh yeah, I make gut work here. That's the reason. Right. 00:19:22 My dad used to say, it's hard enough to raise one crop, let alone two. Yeah. You know, uh, 00:19:26 then I think there's a lot of that out there. And Too far north. We are though. Too cold. 00:19:31 Yeah, they're too, you know, um, Crops come Off back's. When we were looking at CI scores and things like that, 00:19:34 you know, a year ago or so, there were farmers in Minnesota that actually said, putting in the cover crop, uh, 00:19:40 raise their CI score. Yep. Because the cover crop didn't sequester enough carbon to lower it of it, you know, 00:19:44 so being too far north is a, a legitimate concern. And then, you know, like a couple of the questions that we got asked at Commodity Classic, um, the cover crop, 00:19:53 uh, people view it as an expense. And if you're not selling the carbon and you don't have the cattle, you know, 00:19:59 and you're not part of an equip program, you know, whatever it, it is an expense. It, it very much is, you know, that's, 00:20:04 I keep tweaking my cover crop because I, I need to use it for conservation. And the fact that I can sell the carbon really helps. 00:20:12 But I, I really need the cover crop for conservation, but I keep tweaking it to try to make it a revenue stream of cattle feed and like this year 00:20:19 where we're gonna put it out sooner to try to get more growth. That, that's why. And so the, the reason 00:20:24 that cover crops haven't taken off is they're viewed as an expense. Well Tell, it's, it's the timing deal. 00:20:29 You know, we maybe we hadn't figured out. One is you've done a lot of work on the blend one is we, I don't know that you'll ever figure the blend out. 00:20:37 I never, you'll never figure out figure. You never Figure out the figure. I dunno if you'll ever figure out the rates, you know? 00:20:41 Yeah. Brewers talked about what, 10 pounds? Yeah. You know how many, how much cover crop you put out. There's some stuff we put out 10 pounds 00:20:47 and they'll Well, do you want I will, I'll never, never want to use cereal rye again. 00:20:52 Probably. Yeah. I've had so many bad experiences. So That's a never, That's a never. I will say that probably I never want to use cereal rye 00:20:59 because of the bad, bad, uh, uh, occurrences I've had with it. Yeah. And I think I, I've said this 00:21:05 before, when people think of, of cover crop, the default goes to cereal rye and then you have a bad experience, 00:21:10 you never wanna do it again. Yeah. For us, where we are, I think the biggest thing is the second part of what he said that, 00:21:15 or the second part of the cover crop, nobody really treats it like a crop. Mm-hmm. So it's almost set up for failure. 00:21:20 But where we are in the south too, if we plant it as September, like Kelly does, by this time of year, it'd be waist high by May it'd be shoulder high. 00:21:29 Yep. And that's a nightmare. So it's a little bit different where Kelly's gonna do it for grazing and it's never gonna get that height. 00:21:33 Yeah. But it's still gonna build the root More off season than he has. Yeah. And therefore the crop get bigger. 00:21:38 I like your point that nobody ever treats it like a crop. And that's a true statement. 00:21:43 Remember you can, one of my friends from Tennessee said Grandpa told him a man can justify anything. You who told me 00:21:51 That? Yeah. Probably me. That was You who told me that. I'm gonna tell you one thing that, that that, uh, I'm still working on that race card, 00:21:57 but I ain't really figured the out to justify it. Marie likes it. Yeah. There you go. There you go. If I don't have it, I'll be divorced. 00:22:06 I'd say you can justify. There you go. Um, I wasn't gonna quote my grandfather 'cause he was actually an insane old lunatic. 00:22:12 Uh, but, and he didn't say anything that was really quotable. But I'll, I'll say this 00:22:20 usually maybe doesn't anything No way. I'd say That know what else ever would You, you can, you can look at the cover cropping thing 00:22:27 and I think half the people that say I've tried it failed set out to make it a failure. Yeah. They, they wanted to. 00:22:32 They were only doing it to prove to themselves that there's a reason why they never did it. I, if, If I had to cover crop right now, I told Kelly like, 00:22:39 I've gotta try some of this. I've gotta do better at it. I've gotta work towards it. I've gotta, and but if I had to go cover crop right now, 00:22:44 I promise you, I can tell you 20 things, 20 ways that I don't need it and I don't need to do that. And that's a terrible idea. 00:22:51 Like, I promise you I would have the mindset of people. People Yeah, because You're justifying it. Yeah. 00:22:55 A hundred. It, there's guys down in the south where we are, especially in the town I'm in, there's guys that have really figured out how to make it work for 'em. 00:23:01 It's just, they're set up better than we are and they raise crops like cotton and stuff like that. They figured out how to really make it work. 00:23:07 But at the end of the day, you let it get too big where we are. It'll set you up for failure if 00:23:11 you're not careful. We just need To run some cows sauce. Yeah. I need cows. I'm not, I may never have cows up 00:23:17 May, I may never have cows. We don't, we don't have any fences anymore. So there's, You tell me he look, we have to start all over. 00:23:23 I send the boys down who put up a wire. Let's put up one wire. How many cars go past your road today? 00:23:29 Let's put up, you know, how many past cars go past his house? Zero. The male guy. Zero. The male guy and amber. That's, 00:23:35 You know, and she's on foot. She's on foot. She didn't even drunk. What about, uh, if the two biggest failures, not failures. 00:23:41 'cause then this person watches is gonna say, what do you know about it? You know, whatever. Uh, we over till 00:23:46 and I think cover crops should be utilized more. Those are the two things that I think, um, I I, I wish that conventional did more of it. 00:23:55 And I point this all the time. Like that ground's worth $15,000 an acre and you're letting it sit barren, exposed to the soil, to, 00:24:02 to the elements from sometime around Halloween in this part of the world until, uh, May 1st. 00:24:09 That's wrong. I mean, ground should have something growing on it. I I agree. It should, you know, 00:24:14 and that's, I think that's why mother nature brings weeds up. Uh, weeds are there because she wants to cover the earth. 00:24:20 We all think they're a pest. I think that we're working against her instead of with her. I think that we need to look at balancing the soil 00:24:27 and using cover crops, uh, balancing it from a base saturation perspective and then using cover crops. 00:24:32 I think you're gonna have less weed pressure then I think you're gonna have healthy, better soil health. 00:24:36 I think you have better yields then and a better ROI It. But you have to commit and you have to do it all. 00:24:41 And it doesn't happen overnight. You gonna have cover crops 10 years from now. I mean, I'm gonna have 'em next year after that speech. 00:24:46 Like right there. Like I wanna be like Right. Get it wrote down. It needs to write it out. Cover 00:24:55 Crop. I'm gonna, and then cattle. I'm gonna have be two acres cover crop and not a cow one. 00:25:00 Matt's got one cow coming. Does He? That's the way Through. One's gonna put in the freezer Way through. Shovel that. Alright. 00:25:05 Uh, you are already doing the no till. Are you gonna have cover crops? Uh, two years From now? Yeah. We have cover crops 00:25:12 now. We just, we have to manage 'em a little bit different to be Saying. I would And 00:25:16 you don't think cattle's gonna be a part of that? I Don't think cattle's gonna be a part of it. I mean, I don't know the cattle prices today. 00:25:20 Well, I don't know. I can't buy cows. Right. Maybe if you did, you'd maybe let somebody else market your cattle. 00:25:26 It might not be a good idea to buy cows today at all time highs. So That's probably true state. 00:25:30 You know, some people didn't buy 'em an all time high 'cause Kelly sold 'em too cheap yet. That's right. But I mean, temple can't afford gas now. 00:25:36 I would, I would really like to run a, I'd like to run my strip till and if it wouldn't so much, I hadn't figured out how to do it. 00:25:42 Right. But I would love to take a drill and block those rows off. Yeah. And drill in the middles of the strip till like 00:25:49 after you strip tilled and just drill it and then it'd be kind of flat and mash down. I think that would always be, I think 00:25:54 that would be the coolest perspective ever. Just go in with what he wants it to look like. He's going after that get episode about 00:25:59 Versus man. But you'd have a zone that has versatility in it. He then you would have all this in the middles out here 00:26:04 and you would have, you know, you could plant it early and you'd have the best both worlds. And like, he would be wouldd be great. 00:26:09 He's trying to put on English garden. He's garden, a corn bay. All right. He's, he's got tile out here in his field 00:26:14 and his humps are still this big and he's gonna Come. Yeah, that's right. You're supposed to let it settle anyway. 00:26:18 He's supposed to. Really? Yeah. Look, tell me You just say me. I worked mine down in a week. Like, I mean 00:26:22 to smash it. I'm sure you probably killed all Told. Anyway, it was great. I said it's a topic. 00:26:27 If you look it up, it's where you, you're going, you've been going there for a while. Sometimes you, uh, you know, you say things 00:26:32 and I'm like, yeah, that's, that seems like it's very accurate. Um, are more people gonna be on this train that you're on? 00:26:37 Or do you think that really you're gonna always be an outlier? Hmm. Regenerative adoption. I, 00:26:43 I think I oh man. That, uh, Not everybody will adopt it. You know, the, there'll be more 00:26:50 and more people that start to adopt these things, I believe as, as time goes on. According 00:26:54 What the check is. Yeah. It's according to the economics of it. Yes. Absolutely. Well, 00:26:58 There's not a lot of economics in going on and fall telling other than people say, well, I guess my ground warms up in the spring better. 00:27:04 Yes. That's the only reason I've ever hurt. Or, or they think that it has weed suppression, which is obviously, 00:27:09 And we have 24 old planters that plant 50 acres an hour when you are do so. Yes. We really need to speed up. 00:27:15 We need to speed up. Yeah. Um, I think, I think more people will start to adopt this because I, I do believe it's the coming thing. 00:27:21 Um, I think the world is changing a little bit and I, I believe that the nutrient density piece is coming, but I was wrong about the CI piece. 00:27:28 Maybe I'll be wrong about nutrient density, but it sure looks like nutrient density coming. And I always say you, my equipment guy among the tree mag, 00:27:34 I just thought about going out there in like 1985 and driving a 12 foot wide drill over all those hills to put in several thousand acres of soybeans. 00:27:42 And they've made me bored of just thinking about doing it. Just thinking about, about, I Mean, do you understand when he said seven 50 drill, 00:27:48 do you understand how of barons he put in the back? Oh, I mean, it takes two of them. And we used to get 'em from Saginaw down there. 00:27:54 The, I mean, they made down there next to us, they made the power steering pumps. You know, my mom worked on line 00:27:59 and they would have bearings stay rejected. We was the same bearing to win the seven 50 drill knock. My, my uncle would bring it to us like in a sleeve. 00:28:05 There'd be a sleeve of these bearings. You know, we didn't even knock em in Every, that's what when I started farming, 00:28:09 we had a seven 50 no-till drill. And that was my job to put in the beans. It'd be like a thousand acres. I, 00:28:13 I, I can just think those into it and it makes me bored. Alright. We asked the question how conventional regenerative 00:28:19 and organic practices are ultimately going to merge. You gotta hear from Kelly Garrett, Chad Henderson, and Johnny Rell. 00:28:25 I wanna point out also that I never insulted Alabama farm ground. It was Mike Evans, his agronomist 00:28:32 and business partner who saw soil samples from my farm and said, is this really a farm in Indiana? Ground is so s****y. 00:28:39 It reminds me of Chad Henderson. That was, That is a true. So I don't know who got insulted more, me or him, 00:28:46 but that was my cabin's statement. I'm like, well, is that, is that insulting me or him or both of us? So 00:28:52 Anyway, you know, for many Terry, I was like, oh yeah. So I'm tell you, screw you Evans. Anyway, till next time, thanks for being here. 00:28:59 Unless you're Mike Evans Joys welcome with this table and pull up a chair. Sit here figuratively, and enjoy a drink 00:29:04 with us while we're talking about everything. Like, for instance, the regenerative, organic and conventional farming practice 00:29:09 that we all believe will merge in some fashion or another. Till next time, thanks for being here. 00:29:12 Subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's, it's free. Just go on YouTube and type in extreme ag. Also share this somebody you think you can join it. 00:29:18 Uh, 'cause we've got so many things out there on extreme Ag Farm and on YouTube videos that you can, 00:29:23 uh, learn to farm better. And also more importantly, just feel like you're part of the crew. 00:29:26.185 --> 00:29:30.715