Doing What Comes Naturally: Building Farm Profit on Soil Health Principles

0:15 Okay hey, I want to say something before I start. You all have been great, very engaged in conversation, and this has been a fantastic group of people. I mean late night talks and hearing these guys talk about what they're doing, I mean this is a really engaged group.

0:29 So this is a picture of my family before we add another one to our herd. So we got three now—that's my son Jax and my daughter Emma and my wife Kayla. You know, this is really my context of why I want to farm. You know, I come from a big farm family, but I kind of knew that there wasn't really going to be a complete place for me there. But I wanted to farm, so I pursued my dream and I want to leave something for my son and my girls if they'd like to farm.

1:02 So here's my background. I'm in Jasper, which is 30 miles north of Joplin, so like Colton said, about 98 miles from here. I farmed 650 acres and I've got 80 cow-calf pairs, and I'm happy to say that I own them now. I custom graze another 150 cow-calf pairs. That brings—that's about a third of my income a year. And I graze some cattle on perennial pastures but most on cover crops. I've got some laying hens—I always like to make the joke that my laying hens are a non-profit organization. I don't make a lot of money on that, but I enjoy it, and then I also peddle some cover crops inside.

1:38 So how I got started—the farm I have now I inherited and it was passed down from my great-grandpa Dean right there. And my dad there in the middle passed away when I was 19, and I was able to inherit that first 60 acres. So I started off with 60—I'm at 650 now, and I have an opportunity to run another 350 in this next coming year.

1:57 So my farm—I really like Keith was talking about and Darren—I really try to focus on principles. I don't focus on practices or products. What I mean by that is I don't really get too caught up in interceding and certain things like that in relay cropping. I know that that's trendy and a lot of guys like that stuff, but let's not get away from what's really important, which is the principles. When we focus on soil, the products that doesn't make soil. The principles do. Plan the cover crop—yes, it's a product, but that has to be part of the principle system. So I'm not going to go over the principles very much, but they are the most important part, and so you're going to see them all here. And all of those right there are what we really need to focus on. Our apartments—we want to be profitable. I'm going to show my farm economics and some of the things I've done. I've had better yields on some farms. I've had more profitable acres on some, but I just really want to show what we can do.

2:52 So I started no-tilling in 2012.

2:54 That's my boy Jax. Again, I started with soybeans, that's the simplest thing to know till. No telling soybeans is a no-brainer, it just works. It doesn't fail, it just works. The soybeans in that picture made 54 bushel and I'm okay with my son standing out in my fields. I don't have any post application sprays on my farms, so my kids can go out there in my fields or anyone else and I feel completely comfortable with where they're at.

3:21 My first cover crop was in 2013, it was a prevent plant situation. The previous year I went to an organic conference, they were talking about cover crops and I got inspired. So happy that we had a really wet summer at the time. I was raising double crop beans. I planted a cover crop and it got pretty big. I mean those radishes were pretty crazy. I strip tilt some corn in there, and this is kind of what we got. So 2016, the biggest thing in my area is okay, you can no-till or soybeans, but you can't no-till corn.

3:51 So I no-tilled corn. This wasn't into a cover, but this was from the previous year wheat and double crop beans. Once again, I was still in that wheat double crop being corn rotation, if you call a rotation. No cover across between there. They said it couldn't be done, and maybe to an extent they were right. Everyone else was corn around me made 120, and mine barely pushed over 90. And I was doing everything by the books that the university was telling me to do. I was putting on all the action I need to put on, multiple applications of fungicides, insecticides, you know neo-mix on my corn doing the whole nine yards. And it wasn't making any money. I lost my rented farm.

4:30 So I was having to do a lot of work on the sides to make my farm bed. I found this in a bathroom one time, so I take a picture. I have no idea who Jillian Michaels is, but when I failed, you know, I read this. It's not about perfect, it's about effort. And that part, first part there is really key because none of us are going to be perfect by any means. But we just have to keep trying to do our best. And what's so great about soil is God gives us the foundation to look at soil. Look at the native prairies, you know, the timber. We've all talked about that and I'm sure we've all heard that. That's what we need to focus on. Try to have biomimicry, mimic nature.

5:11 I'm kind of like this, I was kind of like this cow. I wasn't making very much money, so I was stuck and I had to change. I happened to meet these guys right here, Rain, Ray Archlead, Gabe Brown. They changed my life 100 percent. I could not have done this without these guys, but I'm not smart enough. Gabe, the first time I've heard him on a YouTube video, I thought this guy doesn't know crap about farming. Turn that off. Two or three months later, I was still researching about how to get no-till to pay because I couldn't afford tillage equipment, of course, and Ray was talking and he mentioned.

5:45 Gabe Brown again and I said that name sounds familiar so I googled Gabe Brown and the second time I heard him talk it all just clicked with me. So I was 100% committed by fall 2016. Finances were tight and I started making dramatic changes on my farm if I wanted to farm double crop soybeans gone, we don't need greedy soybeans. Every acre was covered and I've been that way since 2016.

6:10 If there's not a cash crop growing there's a cover crop growing. I stress my rotation. I no longer have this two year rotation of wheat double crop beans corn. There's other crops, there's a lot of crops out there. I adjusted planting dates. I started planting soybeans earlier in April and I started planting my corn later in May to maximize nitrogen production from the because when your legumes bloom they've essentially hit peak nodulation.

6:40 I changed my maturities on the corns. I went with shorter corn maturities. I went with longer soybean maturities planted earlier. I created a farm budget. This was key. My wife was not very happy with where we were financially and the bank wasn't either. So I had to change. I had to make a farm budget. Start realizing what I was actually inputting on my farm and start understanding what I was losing on my farm. Diversified my cash crops and I started building fence on all the land I own now.

7:09 At 650 acres I own everything but around 100 acres. I'm partners with the bank so we started building fence on every farm but one. I have fence on now to graze livestock and this is a cheap fence system. Two high tensile wire, fiberglass posts. It's not a fancy system. One water source isn't ideal but that's what I've got and I became intentional. I started thinking about things differently. I wasn't just going to go with the normal. I became intentional. That's very important and then I went to daily move with cattle and that has been the biggest bottom line for my livestock production.

7:50 You know I truly feel like a fifth grader can tell me more about how ecosystems work than most farmers. We as farmers think that we need to use nema stripe to take care of the nematode but we're causing all these problems after that. When we make a decision on our farm it impacts everything. I'm going to steal one from Dr. Allen Williams. Everything we do has compounding and cascading effects. Regenerative practices saved my farm and this is how I make them work.

8:19 Every acre has been planted green since 2018 where I'm at southwest Missouri. We get a ton of rain in the spring. We're wet so my covers, I let them take up moisture. They're pulling moisture in the soil so I can plant my cash crops. This is what it looks like after I plant.

8:36 This is ideal for me, this one I want to plant into. And for the most part I don't really have anything special on my planter now. I'm totally with Keith and some of them on some of the attachments and stuff. But I have a very basic planter and drill. My drill's a 9411 drill. I've got an affordable tractor that I can run this right here. I just want to show you something here.

8:56 This is some research that's been done about the cost of tillage and then no-tilling. I'm going to call baloney on the top part there because the no-tilling actually costs less per acre because I can look at my fuel consumption. And if I do custom planting or help another farmer plant their crops I can see their fuel consumption on conventional ground compared to the no-till ground. And that 1990, that 19.90 an acre on a tillage pass is so true because just think about it. You have another tractor, you have a dish, you have a digger, you have a rolling basket, you have a chisel, you have all this equipment right, all this steel. And you're always sending that money back aside to buy the next piece.

9:36 So are you really putting that money back in your pocket, guys? Tell me, 'Oh, I have my turbo till paid for.' And I always ask them, are you gonna buy another one? And the answer is when this one's worn out. So you're putting that money back aside so that has to go in your cost per acre as well as your insurance on that, taxes, your fuel consumption, machinery wear and tear. It gets expensive, folks. Really expensive. That's my fault, tillage.

9:59 Annual rye grass. Everyone thinks you need brassicas though to break compaction. You want your grasses first. Those grasses can find those micropores and expand them out. If you have a big tuber like that, that's a good indication that you probably hit some compaction. So I just wanted to show that most people think that you want to alleviate the compaction, brassicas are the complete way to go. No, you need the grasses in there.

10:22 This was a storm we got in 2018. The picture of these fields are right across the road from each other. If anybody wants to come tour my farm I'll show you where these are at. Top right picture, if you want to raise catfish, that's a good place to do it, that chisel ground. If you want to infiltrate some water, that's how we do that. Okay, that right there is big. That was a warm season cover crop mix that I grazed, went back to a cool season mix to go back to cattle now. You might be wondering how I make that financial effect. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later.

10:54 Okay, worms. This is the first time Ray come to my farm and he's like, 'Mack, you got so many worms.' And you know how Ray is, we both have ADHD, I'm pretty sure. So conversations between me and Ray, they get pretty wild. Worm castings, this is analysis on some worm castings. If you notice, what's the largest piece in that.

11:15 Carbon, okay, we're going to come back to that too. There's quite a bit of stuff that revolves around carbon. Also look at the percentage of nitrogen, hot ash, phosphorus, calcium.

11:26 Here's a five year study done by Joe Lauer. I probably misspoke his name, but this is showing the importance of diversity. Remember I said I stretched my rotation? I've got a lot of cover crops growing, right?

11:39 So if you look at the bottom there, okay, just from a corn-soybean, just by adding wheat to rotation—this is without cover crops. These would be higher in my opinion with cover crops, but this is without cover crops. By stretching the rotation from corn to soybeans to corn-soybeans-wheat, look at the increase. And this is a 10 year study, this isn't just a one year study.

12:00 So we look, as diversity increases and our rotation gets better, look at wheat yields over there. The wheat's the green on your guys' right? Wheat on wheat, 30 bushel. Corn-soybean-wheat, the wheat falling after the legume.

12:17 Okay, so here's some of my diversity on my farm. I probably missed a few things, but I typed this up last night as quick as I could. I raise a lot of different cash crops, like Heath was saying, cool season and warm season crops. The cover crop species there, you know, just try out what works on your farm. I'm not too far away from you all, so probably a lot of stuff I use can work on your farms. And nobody's really talked about this, but understand your resource, what you're trying to accomplish with a cover crop. I'll say that, so you know where that's nitrogen fixation, erosion control. Really, really try to understand what you're trying to do with the cover crop. This is another part about becoming intentional, right?

12:57 Grazing, I like to say this: the key to no-till's cover crops, and the key to cover crops is cattle, because if you want to turn those covers into cash, that's the way to do it. Here's some, this is how we can save on MP and K. I've reduced my MP-K by about 80 percent of my farm.

13:14 Okay, Doug and I were talking about yesterday about some phosphorus and stuff. The more we learn about these things we're inputting on our farms, it's pretty scary stuff, guys. And we can do this, and I'm going to show you how I do this, how I've reduced these. These are just a few ways how cover crops. The main key component is here is a living root, okay? That's the key component. You know, we talked about the root exudates coming out, right? That's a very key component, the living root, and then also maximize biomass. Let the cover crops grow. If your planting and cover crops are this tall, it's going to take 10 years to gain one percent organic matter in our environment. If you're planting cover crops this tall, you just set it up five times for this fast.

13:57 Okay and also think about the amount of nutrients and that biomass is nutrients and as that's decaying down that's going to be returned back to your cash crop as well.

14:08 I don't believe anybody's talked about carbonate ratios. I'm going to plug this in real fast. Very important. I understand going to corn you want a low carbon to nitrogen ratio because you're wanting that nitrogen to be returned back to corn quickly. So I like to be on my farm I want to be around a 40 to 1 carbonation ratio when I'm planting. But for some of you guys getting started out let's keep that lower even that because you want those nutrients to be returned back.

14:32 A high carbon type cover crop would be like cereal rye, it's about 80 to one at full stage. And then a low carbonation ratio cover crop would be hairy vetch. So hairy vetch breaks down a lot faster than fully mature cereal rye.

14:45 Nature is powerful. This is off my grandfather's farm. This has been pasture since the Civil War but my family's owned it since the 30s. It's never had any synthetic fertilizer applied on it. It's had lime applied a few times. And every single year it produces the same timothy hay. Now do the math, how many years were they pulling nutrients off that and it's still producing?

15:11 And think about prairie species, very fungal dominant species, right? Okay so let's start using fungal dominant species in our cover crop as well. Oats, barley, legumes, things like that. They can break down rocks. So here's the hand test results off that prairie. I pulled the Haney sensors, I want to see what's in this prairie soil. It got a full health score of 25 on my farm I'm an 8 right now. So that's pretty good. Percent back organic matter is 3.9 percent. Our row crop ground in our area is easily 1.82 percent. That's pretty common.

15:47 There's the nutrient value. So I took, I cut some prairie hay. I went and sent off a nutrient sample of that. That's what's in the prairie itself, the tissues of the prairie. And then that right there shows what it's deficient in. It's high in calcium. Think about that too. We've got a lot of limestone rocks. I say that's the reason why but everything else in it, it's deficient. According to all the tests, we're deficient in everything. But now how is it producing the same biomass every single year?

16:16 Okay so my great-grandfather bought this in 1934 and my grandfather Mack inherited this. He believes it was hay since the Civil War, baling bundles. We're not 100 sure but we do know it's been hay since 1934. So really, how much fertilizer do we need? Now that you kind of see that, start thinking about your row crop ground because hay is a high removal situation and

16:43 That's happening every single year, that's removing a lot of nutrients. So here's a good buddy of mine, Dr. Buzz Clue. He did a study: 420 pounds of K2O applied in a three-year study. Not super long, but it gives you the idea. Look at the zero application rates here. Wow, the corn in 2016 yielded higher. That's weird. I'm pretty sure almost every agronomist will tell you that can't happen.

17:10 But why is that? On these farms here, Buzz was mimicking nature using cover crops between his cash crops constantly. He wasn't even crazy. So we can do better things with grazing. In the average cow path, there's 0.24 pounds of nitrogen, 0.18 pounds of P, and 0.24 pounds of K. So taking all this in, I just wanted to try it. This is what I call the weedy beans. It was not a prescription cover crop, but I had a bunch of weeds that grow on this farm—Johnson grass and pigweeds this tall that I planted into.

17:52 There's no such thing as weeds. I took tissue samples on the weeds out there. This is eye-opening. Look at pigweeds: 35.8 parts per million boron. All of these so-called weeds are bringing something to your system. And guess what, guys? Cows will eat every one of those. I've seen them.

18:17 You can just see the difference in the plants. Your soil is trying to cure itself. These annual weeds are trying to tell you what you need on your farm and what's wrong with your farm. Now I know we all want to go out there and spray every bit of Johnson grass we can and spray every pigweed we can, but if you've just got—I'm not saying leave weeds out there, I'm just saying really think about not only the economics but the ecological effects of going out there and spraying. Let's say Roundup right on all these pigweeds you have. If they're not at an economically devastating threshold, then why are we spraying? Just really evaluate that. Who cares if your neighbor thinks, 'Oh man, he's not taking care of himself. He's got like eight weeds out there.' Who cares?

18:55 So here's some of my economics. I hope yours are better than mine. I put everything I could think of on these. So I've got my land payment: 140 an acre. Property tax, I put in miscellaneous expenses because that goes into my soil test. That goes into if I grab a tube of grease for a piece of equipment—if I just put that in there just as a safety buffer if I forget something because I obviously forget stuff. Crop insurance, cover crop seed on that farm with zero dollars for those weeds I was telling you about. Zero in P and K added by any MPNK.

22:11 Out of a rotation and guys, God gave cows four legs not standing. They're out there to graze. I've got a few different ways you can do that. There's grazing some stocks. In 150, 50 bushel corn there's 100 pounds of nitrogen, 37 pounds of phosphorus and 145 pounds of potash in just the residue and moisture. Phosphorus is in the corn cob.

22:36 Everyone wants to talk about removals. A lot of that's being cycled back. We're not removing as much as we actually think we are. So yeah, I mean a lot of different ways. This is some stockpiled fescue pasture, not as much as I'd like to see, but that's January. We're getting all there by then. Over in the top right hand corner, that's a million pound stock density. These right here are my South Pole cows. I like South Poles right now. I feel like South Poles are probably the best genetic animal.

23:10 With these high stock density grazings, these cows will start eating things that we thought they would never eat. They act different. Nature sometimes can be competitive. So I took away a mineral for my cows for six months, and I noticed when I put them in these high stock density grazing that the consumption of weeds was going up. They would go out there and they would mow a thistle down. Thistles do a good job of bringing iodine up from the soil. I don't know if they were after iodine in the thistle, I'm not sure. Dandelions bring calcium up pretty well, but they were attacking those weeds, and I would stand for me to the screen here and the cow would be chomping down with thistle over this other picture here.

23:57 You can see how I move my cows just like Doug was talking about. We do with poly wires. It's super simple to unroll poly wire. It takes me about 15 to 20 minutes. I don't have huge long quarter mile stretches though. I've got a perimeter high tensile wire going on the center of my farm, so that way I can branch off both sides of the water tanks underneath that. That makes sense, and then also there's my fly control. See the dragonflies. I don't use any fly control mineral. I don't use any porons, and I never have. I was kind of ignorant when I come into the cattle thing and not supposed to do all this stuff. I've never vaccinated for a black leg. I've never done that stuff, and I really haven't had any issues.

24:39 Do we really need to feed hay for six months? I know guys in my area that are big established farmers, and they start feeding October and don't get done until March. Is that making any money? I mean, seriously, I don't own any hay equipment either.

24:54 Buy my hay and import those nutrients onto my farm. Is that where you guys want your meat to come from, your beef to come from? Yummy, that looks delicious.

25:04 So that's the standard practice in southwest Missouri: how to feed hay. You get that area next to a creek and you just feed a bunch of hay there. This is the way I feed hay. Now this year I fed seven bales of hay to 80 cows that I own and I did that by grazing my covers. The only reason I even fed those seven bales was because of the minus 22 we had with the ice. I wouldn't offend those seven if it wasn't because of that. But if I gotta feed hay, I'm gonna think smarter, not harder. Let's pre-determine where we're gonna put our hay out and let's bail greens.

25:38 Here's some economics of my bail grazing. I pay a neighbor—I paid a neighbor a dollar a bail to come set up my 80 bales. This is last year. I wouldn't have fed this much hay last year. I would have got stuck with some custom grazing animals 30 days longer than I wanted to, but anyways average cost of 35 a bale. I paid him a dollar a bale to come set them out because I don't have a loader on my tractor. And so he made 20 dollars an hour because that's about how long it took him. He made 80. I fed those 80 bales. The total cost is 2,030 cows cattle winter feed cost of 36 a head. How I do that? Super simple. I got one poly wire set up. I take the poly wire over, pop it over, set it over the next bale. My cows get the next bale. It's really quick and easy, simple.

26:24 And like I said, it will be less than the future. I truly feel like in our environment here in the southern environment, we can go 365 days without feeding any hay. So I like to turn covers into cash. The best way to do that is through the cow.

26:40 Here's 2019 grazing some warm season covers. Now this year I didn't have enough stock density. That year I didn't have enough stock density or I didn't have a high enough stocking rate to keep up with forage. You got out of hand. You don't want to graze stuff you try to put on pounds that that's mature. You want graze stuff that's about like this. You're trying to put on pounds. But I took that picture because it's like a jungle out there. I don't know how tall it was, but the Egyptian wheat and the sorghums, they were pretty well dominant. I gotta say, I understand what your next cash crop is too, what you're going to, because it's very important. I've got legumes in there that you can't see and that that field there went to corn. You know, the sun hit—it's not bloomed out that time, but there is some cowpeas and different things like that in there to balance the C to N ratio.

27:25 So here's some pretty basic economics of how I, you know, how I do custom grazing. Doug Peterson gave me the best advice: always have a contract.

27:33 Because I got stuck with cows for 30 days longer than I wanted to and I had to feed a lot of hay to my own cows. Did not make money on that deal. I charge a dollar per animal per day. I like to graze cows with newborn calves on them because that 60 pound, 70 pound calf is still worth a dollar just like that cow, so it's essentially two dollars a cow. And I always charge two dollars on bulls, steers, and heifers I'm around 1.40. And we weigh these animals in at my local co-op on the scales and then we weigh them out.

28:05 If you want to sell this to somebody, sell these registered guys pounds because they're all about pounds. You know, some of these registered breeders are like the Angus and stuff like that, they're about pounds. So sell them pounds, don't sell them your forage and show them that with data. Weigh them in, graze them, weigh them off. That's how I do it.

28:23 And then there's so I put 74 head for 93 days on 59 acres, $6,882, which is about $116. Gross, so I put that's another hundred dollars an acre. I don't have sixteen dollars an acre in expenses. I just want to show you that you can add another hundred dollars an acre to your even corn soybean crop or rotation just by grazing livestock. Pretty good money.

28:49 Highly productive soils, one of those yesterday tend to have a fungal bacteria ratio of one to one. When I first got cattle, my real crop plan was the first time I'd seen mushrooms. I'd never seen mushrooms and they were popping up like everywhere. There's something that happens in the rumen and I've actually never took a cow pat sample to see what the fungal bacteria ratio is, but I say it's pretty darn good.

29:17 Okay, so Austin Campbell, he's from Missouri. He did the study here and I want to show you why no tilling isn't good enough, why we need cover crops. Look at the percent increase in moisture in the tissue samples compared from no-till to cover crops: 41 percent increase in the moisture, 41 percent increase. That's pretty huge. Those are corn tissue samples and soybean tissue samples. Just by having the crop cover crop underneath there, you have 44 more water. That's huge.

29:50 I think y'all are in about 36 inches rainfall environment here in Iowa. I'm in about a 42 to 44 inches. But we still get kind of dry, you know, the rain comes in the spring and fall and we get a little bit dry in the summer. But let's capture that moisture, let's keep that moisture.

30:08 So here's 2020, that's where we're at now. I told you guys I failed no-till corn this year. I finally got it to work where I felt like, okay, I'm doing better. So we had over 40 inches of rain until June 3rd this year, then it cut off till October 20th. Nada, zero from June 3rd to October 20th. That corn on your left.

30:32 Had over 20 inches of rain on it. The corn on the right, and I'm not going to tell you whose is whose, but the corn on the right it had three inches on it after it was planted. Okay, is there a visible difference? These farms here are less than a third of a mile away, same soil type, different growing conditions.

30:56 Here's the economics on this. I'm not going to go over everything there, but if you see anything I missed let me know. I do have a litter cost in there. Litter in my opinion is just as bad as effect fertilizer if we use it too much. I've seen some soil samples of 450 parts per million phosphorus. Now your fungal hyphies and stuff can't function as well as they need to with that much phosphorus in your soil. It's not a race, guys. We're not trying to have this big number on P and K. That's a bad thing. We need balance. 399 total cost production. Once again, I raise non-GMO corn, that's why my cost is probably cheaper than most—39 dollars an acre.

31:34 I'm not planting super high populations. I'm not big in the interceding thing, guys, to be honest with you. That's a practice I think there's a great place for that. The reason I don't believe in it is because if you can tell me that that three-inch tall annual rye grass is capturing as much sunlight as another corn plant right next to it, I would highly disagree with you.

31:54 Net income was 401 dollars an acre this year. I had a farm net almost close to—I had a farm net over a thousand dollars an acre. The corn made 160 bushels to the acre, and everyone else in my area was picking 60 and 80 bushel corn. So that was a difference, almost twice as good. I'm not going to say I can do this every year, but that thatch, that residue, that two inch residue underneath there is how I make that work.

32:20 That's my soil. My right hand, that's the soil on the left. Those holes are five feet apart. Is there a difference? A little bit visual difference. Why is that soil darker? Carbon. Remember, look, think about the worm casting—26 carbon. Think about those tissue samples, anywhere from 35 to 45 carbon.

32:42 Let me ask you a question. This is how we treat our row crop fields, and let's put the perspective of our body. If I give you a vitamin pill and it has every essential nutrient you need, can you live off that one little pill? No one's going to answer it. Okay, answer's no. You can't live off that little pill. Why is that? Has every nutrient we need? We're putting every nutrient we need in our body. We're missing the main one, folks. Carbon. Carbon is the largest percentage. Okay, organic matter—we all talk about organic matter. I hope this is something you all have heard. Organic matter is approximately 50 to 58 percent carbon. Okay, plants release carbon in the soil. We'll keep a living plant there as long as we can.

33:21 There's my phone number, there's my name. If you don't spell it, add me on Facebook if you want to follow me. Come to my farm. I have an open door policy on my farm. I'd love to show you my farm. Thank you.