Building Soil Biology and Water Efficiency Through Cover Crops and Diverse Rotations

0:08 How many people in here are just starting with zeal or want to start?

0:23 A little bit by myself, I started no-tilling in '95. Basically a fourth-generation farmer, and my dad was going out there—he thought there's no future in agriculture. He did not want my brothers to farm. He was adamant about it. He ran us all off. He got a heart and he finished out his career. When he quit, we have BIA trust land in our hurry, releases, and he gave some way, and I wasn't going to let him. I got him back. I wouldn't go co-sign knows about a 750 John Deere drill, and I started farming no matter what anybody else said.

1:11 I was a big barn, rented everything else. Doctor drugs, everything. I had a no-till drill that was my piece of equipment. That know what that comes it good—that was all I hear. I wanted to farm. And that's part of the journey that I ended up right here now, and it's been wonderful. I love to farm. I love to grow things. I love making my farms better.

1:50 In case you don't know, we're passionate about 200 miles straight northwest of.

1:56 Here a little bit about my farm. I've talked about three thousand acres of cropland and they're all subject to being planted up to two times a year. I plant primary crop, apply secondary crops, I'll plant killer crops. I'm not afraid anytime somebody's gonna grow all this for each seat and cover crop seed that all you guys wanna plant. Somebody's got to throw it and that's the direction that I've taken is seed production. Almost everything I brought, somebody else is going to plant it at some point. I've heard very little commodity grains. If I do a farm store everything and I sell them all, I have no livestock. I've never had any livestock ever.

2:56 When I was growing up, everyone said you had to have livestock to carry the farming. What I discovered was everything was sacrificed for the cattle. The farm II couldn't make any money because everything went to the cabinet. When I got rid of the cattle, the farming became profitable. Also my lineage in my area and not having any cattle made me different from everyone else. I got to rent the farms with no fences, no water.

3:33 Corps of engineer my hands were cattle are completely restricted all these other opportunities opened up for me because I was different and that's what I ended up with now I've got a whole bunch of farms around.

3:47 Life's tough but guys like digging and a few other guys they convinced me that the biology of the livestock on the land is going to enhance my cropper. I can enhance my cocktail by having terrible I don't give Cal making money or not on that cap and that's the point on that right now is figuring out how to integrate cattle into my operation without the spoiling residue because I have to have residue grow crops I have to keep my ground covers if I figure out how to use my existing pasture and on my cropland we're going to break my nose.

4:42 Number one make a profit I don't need to make money none of this other stuff matters all the clean water clean air in the world for my neighbors and everybody else with nothing being good at boxing out makes money yet that is number one that makes sure that I can do it all again next year we we have no one goes.

5:09 I love to preserve your lands. I loved with my farms better. I like doing all this but I got some extra money. Headaches, erosion. I want to totally eliminate roads if I may not be able to, but that is my goal is to completely eliminate it. If I don't have runoff my farm, so I won't have your roses. That's what I'm looking for. I strive for a 100% water efficiency. I do not want any runoff of my land period. I want to run all that water through the plants and being in seed production. I will not be as a fish forge system. I've got to use the first full five, eight, nine inches of water before I get to the first pound of grain production. Four inches, not that way for it to get an inch of rain you get so many pounds of forage. That's the most efficient use of water. That's another reason I'm looking at that crazy and using for dishes is to get my water efficiency harder than it is. I have farmers that depends long-term no-till that have had, I can count the runoff they've been someone and in the last five years they just don't run water our.

6:32 Cropping intensity is high in that our infiltration rates are high enough that we can use all the water that we get. Another thing I'm really big on is almost every spot I read, almost everything, I had a traitor, all these farms that I owned are the ones I bought myself the last few years.

6:56 The farms are run down, they're degraded, they've been tilled to death. They're just in really poor shape and it just erased me to death when I take over a new farm and I have to go through this whole process of bringing it back up and bring it back to life, get your line on it. You feel the fertility back, the kidney where I can actually makes money on it. All these goals and it's like everybody else said the ground has to be covered. We're going on is the kiss of death.

7:32 In my country in the summertime, the texture difference of surface temperature, the clean cover ground and buried around degrees difference. Well, can you talk about that? 140 degrees kills the biology thing easily. Go over on in 40 degrees in.

7:50 Summertime just has to be covered at all times, this is what it's all about. That is a six-foot moisture probe, it's all the way in the ground. My soils will hold anywhere my poor soils will hold 46 inches of stored moisture. My best soils have only 10 to 12 inches, maybe 13 inches. Matters on most of my farms have gone up about 1 to 1/2 percent from where I started. My best farms are around 3% right now. They're just worlds—the difference between 1/2 and 3% is the difference between a really good farm and just an average farm.

8:49 You can see that this is after a cover crop. You can see everything is frozen down in the wintertime. I'll have short bowel periods sometimes to gather moisture up if I'm going to intend to plant corn. I would like to have a short time period to gather moisture up. If I'm playing in the shallow rooted a little moist, you use a prop, it's not such a big deal. Up and run a cover crop right up to the end and then plant.

9:27 Talk about the erosion part of this is my home farm from my great-grandfather.

9:33 came a long time ago I recently bought my painting this is a pawn that drains approximately 35 acres of crop ground and about 40 acres of pasture that's still I'm standing on about four more feet of steel that since 1948 so just last year that farm had thousands and thousands of yards a cubic yards of silk in it.

10:06 Just off that small part of that 160 acres and it just it just amazes me how much dirt went down the down the drain unfortunately it stayed on the farm I've reclaimed all this and took it back out of the pond but it's just amazing at such a small area can you read it so much and my my dad had a whole wall full of Conservation Awards a wall full of and this still happens this is how this is what I want.

10:50 This is one of the cover cropping extensively is for me my second crops come first and the cover crops come when I I don't have time for a second crop this is the other night way makes I believe there's some breast cos in here there's one season grasses some fires this was after a very severe drought we.

13:11 The next year this went to the grain sorghum variety trial and we had several varieties. All this is—if you're not familiar with this—it's always good to start on a small scale. But for me it's a garden, I have a cart, and then I have a drink or test block, and we're our priming things. It's where I figure out what works, what doesn't work, how to do it, and it keeps you from making costly mistakes when you can try small scale.

13:58 This is one of my second problems with account. These the group copies—one means several different kinds of militants. Luckily an open holiday for all kinds of stuff. The reason I put this pigeon in here is these were planted after week wherever we've got good cover on soil we can hold moisture. Planning that for two months on him we can hold it at planet death until we're ready to get pregnant planner. And these were planted—we had a piece of rain act our lives they were planted and it did not rain again for three months, and that only off stored more. The entire group is also stored moisture. They never right.

14:57 Of course there's hot but this is something much better by hand. It's a good story and when it comes to the cow peas and other comment, let me use water crops we can grow a crop without a drop of rain. But we've done if we've got destroyed moisture we can typically grow it. Won't be a great crop growth model. This is typical of stuff that I plan into. This is actually a plant economy. If you ride this was a we can get the whole thing. I never take enough pictures my life simple. Never take a ride either. We roll, actually we not part of this down over that part understand. And I'm convinced in our country if you're planted in the spring time it's a great benefit to keep the wind off small plans and made it like this. I want to keep that residue upright and I want to keep the land off and I am cold water, cold wet littles like the hammock nor are not a concern for me at all. Cotton rats and littles are not concerned. There's another one, this is a grain sorghum stubborn but we need to know it's real difficult as stuff that I'll planning. I know.

16:37 Great we'll be back today you know I can it's so many times hang out for that and I look at it as I'm teen muscle it'll leave microbiology but I think that he's still there could still be a benefit and every once in a while these things make my neighbor scratch their heads this is my home farm in the background and this is filled with went from directly from native grass to Bermuda grass the distant ups pregnant about 45 years ago and I started going to the farm it playing the corn into the new grass and we're in the middle the drought and I think it stands it was awfully dry where and Springs mother but it started raining last time right and that field actually made by 113 bushel corn our County average about 50 it was just amazing we're the best for me to grasp was is where the best corn was there was there was a lot of Halloween the new girl raised reading ph is why we have mochi ice cream good line sources t miles away the only nobody will and I've been known to do other things like this I don't know how many people.

19:27 Want to come by all this for me and I just tell my feet my soul Balaji. This actually just Indian truck or BIA trust me, I shouldn't say Indians, Native Americans yeah. I just a.m. we're planning a second crop of $50 a night of fine. So we cover crop, this is sort of savanna planted into wheat stubble. And now I'm putting counties into it, which cop the next year we needed a really durable residue that would last all the way streets with cotton harvest the next year. And that's why I've got some big hi carter something to put last year. It is the same field earlier, this is cotton and rice bellum. I have never seen common with cotyledon. These big as these, everything's the palm of your hand. There's like they were growing the green. They weren't beat up by the enemy. You're inside anyway, this this was a farm I just bought here before. Basically the banding eroded farm and wind everybody found cotton home.

20:59 This is great saw room we do we do quite a bit of grain sorghum and wheat stubble is the second crop wood over red wine. Buh-burn seed market but that's just another example get those plants down out of the wind and keeping that hot ground and also.