Finding Freedom in Farming: Why Regenerative Agriculture Offers Real Hope

0:05 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top farmers and experts in the regenerative egg movement. Join us as we learn together how to regenerate God's creation for future generations.

0:20 The egg economy is pretty tough right now. There's a lot of people who are not being profitable. There's a lot of people who are discouraged. There's a lot of people who just don't have a lot of hope for the future within agriculture and we see and talk to those people every day. But there is hope out there and there are people who are hopeful and I'm really excited for our conversation today because our guest is not only a good friend but he's also a great promoter of regenerative agriculture and has a wonderful message of hope that we all need to hear. So our guest today is the famous Ray Archeletta. Ray, the soil guy, Archeletta. Ray, welcome to the podcast.

1:04 Thank you, Keith. And thank you for that kind introduction. I was kind of wondering famous. I started looking around but it was good. Thank you, Keith. Yes, I love the way you started that, Keith, with hope. And thank you for having me because I think that we can talk about that. And I think sometimes the hope comes through a lot of trials and a lot of suffering. And I think this time of suffering now that a lot of producers are going through, I see such an incredible hope for the future because of the change. And sometimes we don't change until we're pushed to a corner. Just be brutally honest. And I think this is the opportunity where people are searching. So it's great to start off.

1:49 That's right. And for the two people that are maybe listening to this that don't know who Ray Archeletta is, Ray, you've been through some tough times as well. You know, you worked a whole career with NRCS. Saw some good times, some tough times there, you know, with just different transitions within the agency and, you know, just experienced some challenges as well as victories there. So, give us just a real brief background for those who may not be as familiar with you and how you got to where you are now as kind of an independent consultant traveling all over the world spreading this message of hope that regenerative agriculture brings.

2:29 Well, thank you Keith. I like you said I put 30 years in with the agency. I retired in 2016 but I put about five or six years in New Mexico and five in Missouri and five in Oregon and another 10 until I retired, lived in many places and traveled all over the United States. And I think what's the most important about my aspect of the journey was when I was seeing Keith that farmers were going broke still back in the '90s and I lived in and I think the epiphany I had was I was living in Oregon. I was working in Oregon as a district conservationist and lived in Idaho that I couldn't understand that 500 prime acres in the treasure valley in Idaho is incredible that a farmer with 500 prime acres of great irrigation, lots of water, great soils, couldn't bring a son to the operation that bothered me. That really bothered me. The other thing that really bothered me was every time irrigation season the Snake River would turned to chocolate right at my border which I was responsible for. So we weren't cleaning things up and I was noticing that why are farmers struggling. Why are they if you look at farmers now they are one of the top five careers with the highest form of depression but the highest suicide rate.

3:57 And I'm going what is wrong here? We have the most incredible job, the first mandate God gave us to go heal the land and work with the land and take care of it and yet they're going broke.

4:10 That's when I've had the epiphany. Working in the agency, I think this is the epiphany, and I want to make sure the group understands: not one person in college, not one mentor, not one friend told me, 'Hey Ray, your job is to mimic nature. Don't force it with the fertilizer, the tillage, and the chemical. Nurture it, love it. Biomimicry—mimic life, work with it, not against it.' Not one professor, not one teacher, none of my education—and I went to college for eight years in this—not one told me that. That was the epiphany. That's what changed everything for me. And I started realizing, 'Oh my goodness, everything—a majority of everything I was taught was based on the wrong premise.' And that was the game changer, Keith.

5:02 I try to promote that to the agency, and it was difficult because we are embedded in what we were taught, and paradigms are hard to break because we have so many filters. I think that's where it started for me and how I try to promote soil health. We called the movement the soil health movement. Regenerative agriculture and soil health are the same thing. I mean, the reason we started with soil health is because it was innocuous and it was a simple message to communicate, and that's how it started for me.

5:37 Yeah, and I really like that. You know, I don't know how many times in presentations or talking to people I have started by saying, 'When we look at how God created the system,' you know, because basically that is mimicking nature. We're mimicking these natural systems, and when we do that, it's all about the biology. There's certainly chemical processes involved in the whole thing, but we have just lost focus on the biology. And I'm the same way, Ray. You know, I went to school. It only took me five years, Ray, not eight, but, you know, who's counting, right? But yeah, I didn't hear any of that either. And you know, my class was all about the physical and the chemical properties, and very little if any about the biological properties of the soil.

6:30 And so when we look at how God created the system, you know, then what do we learn? What do we see? And that's where the soil health movement started. It's kind of shifted over to regenerative ag, which I think encompasses soil health, but I like to think of it as being even more because it's bringing in the people side of things, which you mentioned earlier. You know, how do we regenerate our people along with the soil? And that's a lot of what I want this conversation to be about. How do we bring hope back to the land? How do we bring hope back to the farmer? How do we bring hope back to the communities? Because, you know, as we lose farmers, we lose communities. And that's just really hard to recover from. And that affects so much more. You know, we live outside of a little town of 200 people. I know you live in a very rural environment there in Missouri. And so these communities are really important, and without the farmers, there will be no rural communities.

7:32 Well, that's true. And I'm glad you mentioned to the audience, yeah, it took me eight years because I'm kind of slow, Keith, and you're exactly right. And because, you know, it's funny when we took graduate-level soil physics and soil chemistry, and I think the audience needs to really realize we really push the chemistry into physics. But I think we forget that we live in a physical planet, but life modifies it. I think one of the coolest quotes I've ever heard is from a Russian scientist: 'Life, the strongest geological force on the planet, is life itself.'

8:08 And I think that's where we missed it. I think we don't. When I teach all over, that life is powerful and it's the microbial life and just life—the

8:18 Viruses, the bacteria, all of these organisms, plants and diversity. It keeps our planet from being a piece of floating rock in the universe. So I think that's what we're trying to tap into Keith, and we're talking about how we're going to mention how do you facilitate life into your operation. And I think one of the things that started off this journey, and I think starts off for a lot of people, is a paradigm shift. Sometimes I've had to go through a large paradigm shift, and when I work with producers that's the same thing that happens. When I teach, we have to facilitate an incredible paradigm shift and come to the realization I didn't have it right. There was a lot of things I didn't have right. And so I think that starts off with that: how do you, how do we get people to start off? And I think what you do at Nexus conference, when we teach and you have every year, is to help not only bring community but it also helps each other build, help each other, because we all went through that paradigm shift and how we teach each other and how we continue to learn. So I think that's what you do such a good job about bringing in that conference, and that's a good start of it.

9:37 Yeah, thank you for mentioning that, and I'll just share a little bit of background again for people who may not be familiar with that. We at Green Cover, we've always been passionate about education. We've been passionate about not just teaching people but allowing, creating environments where people can teach each other, where they can learn from each other. You know, before I came back to the farm, I was a teacher for 10 years, and as part of that, I was the tech coordinator at a school. And the best training I ever went to for our big software package that ran the whole school was a users group. And every class was taught by people like me who were using the software. And it was just an incredible learning because you learn from people who were actually using the tools, not by the people that developed or wrote and were selling the tools. And I just always remember that, and I was always thinking how comes there's not more of this kind of thing? And so we created what we call the regenerative nexus summits, and we've set it up to be a users group because that's essentially what it is. Every one of those sessions, and we'll have eight different kind of roundtable or panel type discussions around different topics within regenerative agriculture.

10:53 But they're taught and they're led by farmers who are actually doing the work, who are both succeeding and who have had failures on their own operations. But it's just a really rich environment where farmers and producers can learn from each other. And then there's a nice representation of educators, researchers, consultants, but it's by far very farmer driven, very farmer centric. So we've appreciated all of the help that you've done in putting these events together and helping lead some sessions and contributing. But maybe just make a few more comments about you know how these events are kind of unique because when we first started there weren't that many events. You know, Tell in the Plains is a great event. There was National No-Till Man. And Ray, I'm sure you get invited to come speak at all kinds of things. You could literally make a career out of just going to events because there's more.

11:55 So just give a little perspective on what makes these Nexus Summits maybe a little unique and different.

12:03 Well, thanks Keith. Well, they're exclusive. Yeah, they're not inclusive. They're exclusive. In other words, it's a very elite of thinkers who come. And what do I mean by that? It's people that are taking it to the next level, Keith.

12:19 People that are like myself. I bought a farm for the very reason that I wanted to feel the pain what the producers go through. You can go to school all these years but unless you have a farm you suffer along with the producers and understand what they're going through and how their struggles financially.

12:40 And what I love about these schools that you do, Keith, I think we forget that we just think everything is the science and the technology. But what I love about your schools, it's the social aspect. And when I invented the word context as one of the soil health principles, we leave the social and the cultural and the spiritual aspect. We very myopic when we look at what a farmer has to do in every day of their life because when I was an NRCS employee and I would go to farms my job was to provide technical expertise but I didn't understand their ecological context.

13:30 I didn't understand their social context because the social aspect in the local community is brutal because if you go to organic the social pressures in the local community is brutal. The cultural context, what is culturally accepted in that context, and the economic context. Sometimes we go in there and we think we're going to give all this technical, but we don't understand their economic situation or where they're at economically and maybe can they carry some of these practices or not. And the last part is the spiritual aspect because working with tribes, working with the Amish, the land is spiritual to them. It's not just about making an income, but they see it as an absolute stewardship and beyond stewardship.

14:19 That's what Nexus brings in. You get to see that holistic approach when we meet there. It gives them a sense of seeing the whole thing, not just little pieces. And that's what I love about Nexus so much. You get that holistic view.

14:37 Yeah, and we've really tried to be purposeful about that. So we'll dedicate a portion of the time to the connections between soil health and human health. We'll dedicate a portion of the time to the people side of things. And we'll have farmers share about how they manage employees, how they manage landlords, how they manage neighbor relations, just all of the things. Because when we started Green Cover the most challenging thing was the people side of things. We have 55 employees now and we live outside of a town of 200 people.

15:14 Well it can be challenging to find and keep good people. Now we've been very fortunate. We've been blessed. God has been good to us and we have a lot of really good people, but it hasn't been without its challenges and it's the same way with farms. I know lots of farmers that are struggling to find employees, good employees and keep good employees, or like you mentioned earlier, bring family members back and what do those relationships look like?

15:40 So we definitely spend time talking about the people aspect as well as the agronomic stuff like weed control and how do you integrate biology, how do you integrate cover crops, how do you do rotation. So it's a well-rounded, it's a holistic approach, but a lot of the learning happens not during the sessions but in the times that we build in for people just to visit with each other. And that's one of the things that makes Nexus events unique. We don't have a formal trade show. We have long breaks. We might have an hour and a half to two hour lunch, 45 minute breaks with no trade show because we

16:26 Want people talking with each other in those small groups that so much valuable exchanging of information happens. And then the other thing that we do that I think is kind of unique, when you sign up to come to Nexus, you basically say yes, it's okay to share my information and then everybody that's there gets the contact information for everybody else. Now, if you can opt out of that if you don't want to, but we want people to make connections beyond the end of the summit, and we want them to continue, and I know some have and they will continue to make those connections and even today, Ray, you know, we were talking before we started recording here about one of the projects that you're working on in Mexico, and I said, 'Oh, I know this guy we met at the Nexus Summits that's doing some similar things. Let me get you connected to him and share that information. So these people love to share, don't they?

17:22 Yeah. And I think that's the most powerful part you bring in, Keith. It's the community. We build community. And I tell one of the biggest challenges I've seen in agriculture is, and Americans are really bad about it. And being an American, we work by ourselves. And I tell farmers, don't work by yourself. Work in community. It's nature's too complex. It's too difficult. Like I would tell a 30-year-old farmer, I said, 'You hope the good Lord will give you 50 more years.' You don't have 50 years. You have 50 chances. 50 chances. So when you work with a community locally and with the Nexus group, let's say you have five or seven in your community. Now I got seven years of information in every year because it takes a whole year to find out whether you did the practice right or not. Don't work by yourself. Worst thing we do. What I love about Mexico is they or other countries like Australia, they work in community because they don't have cost share. They don't have government help. Don't work by yourself. And what I love about Nexus is I create another bigger circle and got to meet some of the producers that I work with like I met Todd Harrington. Now we work together helping one of the largest grape growers in Mexico. We build, we work together technically. We've built community. So it's too complex.

18:49 I really appreciate that you bring that, Keith, because if that's the most powerful thing Nexus does is brings community so you don't work by yourself.

19:00 Yeah. And Ray, you were just here in Nebraska last week speaking at an event in Holdridge and one of the people that I know you and I both have a lot of respect and admiration for is Jenny Burhill.

19:15 Yeah.

19:16 One of the greatest extension agents ever. I think she's just, she cares so much. She cares so deeply. But one of the great things that Jenny does is she helps these farmers do on-farm research and then share it with everybody in the group.

19:31 Yeah, she just really has a great knack for that and she's already signed up to come to one of the regen Nexus summits and she's great about helping people understand how do you do on-farm research but more importantly how do you share that then with a group of people? How do you form some of these little networks like what you're talking about? And you know, how can you cooperatively learn things and distribute knowledge and information? And that is hard. That is really hard. And you know, hopefully events like this help people get that started. You know, Keith, I'm going to tell you one of as I've been like in the last 26 months, I've been in six continents all over the states. Like you mentioned, the biggest number one problem I see with agriculture and producers, they do not do their own research. They don't do their own work.

20:29 You're a farmer scientist. You do your own demonstrations. And they're spending millions of dollars. I think this is where the hope part brings in to this whole talk that you and I are talking about what I call freedom farming. It's really regenerative agriculture is freedom farming—freedom from the bank, freedom from the chemical people, from the pesticides, from the fertilizers. When we get the soil healthy and farmers do their own research, I have farmers that have completely eliminated nitrogen in their operation. They've eliminated phosphorus. They eliminated potassium. What changed in their operation? The common pattern. They do their own research. They do their own demonstration plots. It is critical so they can do their cover crop and they can see how animal integration has helped the operation. It takes away the guessing. Stop guessing. Use the Haney test, use all these tools. We teach the operators to do your own science. The top producers in the country do their own science.

21:45 Like I think about Russell Hedrick. Well, everybody's in a panic trying to get everything planted once you start. The spring comes and it's like they go into this frenzy. That young farmer starts his plots ready for the year. He puts that first. He puts 40 hours of time to get his plots ready because he's always learning. And I think that's what I love what Jenny in Nebraska is doing. You've got to stop guessing. This is where the hope comes in. Can you imagine, Keith—you don't buy fertilizer, you reduced your herbicide like 90%. You eliminated when you go to no till reduced your fuel cost by 66%. This is where the hope comes from. Here's where the freedom comes from. Not depending on government posture, not depending on the fertilizer and the chemical companies. Here is where the hope comes. And this is where green cover plays such a critical role in bringing freedom by putting living covers which runs the biological system.

22:56 Yeah, because technically they haven't eliminated nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium. They've eliminated the inputs and they're cycling the natural forms of all of those elements for their plants through biology. And so, you know, we have every acre of crop ground has 30,000 tons of nitrogen just sitting in the air above it. We just need to employ the biological workers to make that available, and there's phosphorus and potassium and all these things are in our soils. You know, and we've had really good conversations about this and how you can take advantage of the resources that you have. And so, yeah, that's very exciting. And you know, the other thing that people have to understand is to do these plots like what you mentioned that Russell is doing and some of the stuff that Jenny helps people do, there's really not a lot of cost to doing that other than your time because you can do it at small scale.

23:53 And we've never had access to cheaper and better tools than we have now. I mean, you know, everybody's got planet monitors and GPS, and you know, it's easier than ever to keep track of. Like a Haney test or a PLFA, you know, those have come down in price and, you know, even DNA, you know, metagenomics testing has drastically reduced in price. And we will continue to see the development of testing and measurement tools that will fundamentally change how we look at things, I believe. But if you don't get started now, when those really great tools become available, you're not going to be prepared to integrate them into your operation. You got to get started. It's about saving the farm, Keith.

24:39 You can't save it if you're guessing. And that's why I get so excited about what the work Jenny and the University of Nebraska are setting up with that landowner program.

24:55 The Nebraska on-farm research and learning network. I please producers when you're hearing Keith and I, please go on to that website because it shows you how to set up the plots, it shows you how to do everything and start down this journey.

25:16 The biggest struggle, Keith, is this right here. When I go, if you want freedom, this is the only way. It's the journey, and I think one of the things about regenerative agriculture which I don't think we tell people enough: freedom isn't for free. It's going to be hard work. You have to think. You have to work hard. It doesn't come easy. I tell farmers, I'm sorry, but you farmers and ranchers, you chose the most difficult profession on the planet.

25:51 You're dealing with an ecosystem that changes every second. It's dynamic. Try and make a living. Going to the moon is easy. Try making a living on a farm and ranch who has to deal with the climate. He has to be a CPA. He has to be a mechanic. He has to be an engineer. He has to be a soil ecologist. He has to be an agronomist. There's days I'll tell you, Keith, I don't think I even have the skill set.

26:19 Because it's that tough to make a living and dealing with the markets, how they fluctuate and change, and then it's not easy. That's why you can't be guessing, and that's where a lot of our farmers and ranchers are hurting. They're just spending way too much money that they don't need to.

26:42 The ones that are being successful do have good community and they do have a network of people that they learn from and learn with, and you can go down that road together and don't have to face it alone. And so again, getting back to the Nexus events, we really hope that those encourage people to reach out beyond themselves because your network doesn't have to be who's physically next to you. A lot of times it's who is next to you in your mindset, who is thinking like you are.

27:17 It's helpful to have similar rotations and similar environments, but it's also helpful to learn from other people. I'll never forget the first one of these that we did, Ray, in Omaha. I had an organic tomato grower from California, and he was one of our cover crop customers. And so I got him to come all the way to Omaha for this regen Nexus event. Well, I had him on a panel. I don't remember if it was weed control or nutrient cycling, but I'm sure when people looked at that, these corn and soybean farmers from Nebraska and Iowa and Illinois were looking at that going, 'What are we going to learn from an organic tomato farmer from California?' But you know what, I had a lot of those guys say, 'I learned more from that guy than anybody else.'

28:12 Because it just helped them to think outside the box. The mindset of this organic tomato farmer from California, corn and soybean farmers from Nebraska can learn from. And that's the cool thing about these events is that there's people from all over the country. They come together, they share, you challenge each other. Iron sharpens iron, and it's just really neat to see how all of those connections come together.

28:40 I tell you what, Keith, I'll tell the audience right now when you this gets out, I don't want you to come if you're

32:39 I want to reaffirm one point that you brought up, Keith. Back to that story in Australia. You had to set up your plots. You had to be willing to share with the group. You don't get invited to a group like we have a group here with Steve Freeman and I have. I work with a group of farmers, we ranchers. We visit each other's ranches. We share. We show our failures where we screwed up. It's a journey of humility together. It's not a journey of competition. It's about how we can collaborate with each other, how we can learn from each other. That's what these groups are. If you're one of them and you just come here to selfishly learn but not give back, you don't belong in the group. This is, I think, a very, very distinct group of type of people. They give, they share, and they're willing to put the work in. I think that needs to be very clear.

33:34 Healthy natural systems don't have freeloaders in nature. When we look at that, when we look at how God created that system to work, the plants are feeding the biology, that liquid carbon. The biology is providing all kinds of wonderful resources and services back. The soil is providing minerals, but the plants are providing protection and cover for the soil. It all fits together and everybody has a part to play and everybody's working, and that's how communities should work as well. Whether it's a community group, a larger community, or an event like what we're talking about here, everybody has a part to play and everybody has to contribute, and that's what we get excited about.

34:21 I think one of the things as I travel the whole world—I don't think people realize, and this is one of the biggest struggles that it took me years and years to learn—that the number one important thing you can do on your farm, if you're farming, is to put a living plant out there on that soil. It's the mouth of the soil. The biggest struggle I've been teaching for a long time—and I remember David Brandt when he was still alive, we were there with 300 people in this big workshop and I stood there and I even did that the other day, remember, in Holdridge. I said, 'Producers, how many of you cover the soil all the time? You never leave it bare. You just don't leave it bare?' And it was amazing that 99% still did not raise their hand. Just a little 1%. It hasn't changed, and they've come and they've learned. I don't know how many times you have listened and you come. It's like coming to church and not applying what you learn from the gospel, and it continues to shock me because the soil—this is the way the soil eats, with a living plant. And if you would ask me one practice that I would do above any other practice, it's a living plant. That's why cover crops, and that's why we learn and teach. I hate the word 'cover crops'—hate it in the United States—because the first thing I mention cover crops, people shut down. Cost me money. They're going to steal water. I don't have an erosion problem. These are all the things that surface to the top. More management, blah blah blah. And I said, 'No, you don't understand. That's the way the soil eats. It's the only way you feed those microbes that take the minerals out of the rock and feed them. That's why I love service crops.' I'm calling them service crops. They service the soil. They serve as the next rotation. They service your cattle. They drive the system. And that's what I love about teaching about service crops. And that's one of the things we talk about a lot. And I'm not telling these people just because Keith sells service crops. It's the reality of it.

36:41 That's the way nature works. That's why the planet's covered with living plants. The foundation.

36:50 You can't get away with that. So vital, so crucial. And when you don't have them and you don't have those biological processes working for you, you have to replace them. And in my carbonomics talk, I talk about the concept of welfare. Agricultural welfare is when we have to provide those inputs that should be coming through the biology, but because we've broken the system and they're not coming through the biology, we have to step in with welfare payments and with some of these inputs. And I don't know that the goal for most people should be to eliminate all of those, but the goal for everybody should be to reduce them as much as possible.

37:36 Because you know, it's much more likely you're going to become profitable by reducing your cost. We'll never outproduce the problems that we have in agriculture right now because the more we produce, we just depress the prices. But when we can not decrease our production but decrease our cost, that's going to be the key to becoming profitable.

38:02 I call it death by tools. Fertilizer is a tool. Chemicals are tools. I work and teach all over the place and a lot of environmental groups get really upset because they want me to eliminate Roundup right away. I said, 'No, the soil's addicted. It's not ready.' I always bring up Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka had a beautiful goal. The whole country wanted to go organic. Was the problem organic? No. It was a wonderful goal. They wanted to be free from all these costly inputs, not because of global scale, but think about the exchange and it's expensive. It's even more expensive when you live in a third world country. That was a wonderful goal, but they didn't understand that their soil took years and it takes years of training to be free.

38:55 They wanted to do it right away and people went hungry and it made it worse. So this is a journey for the rest of your life and you don't do it right away because you go broke. And so I help environmental groups understand it's going to be a journey. You don't get rid of these inputs. The farmers don't want to pay for those inputs. They're tools and they're costly tools. And so the death by tools is too much fertilizer, too much pesticide, too much tillage, overgrazing, too much, too much, too much.

39:31 Back off, back off, back off. But you know what it takes to do that? Understanding, using the right tools, learning how to use your tools correctly and how to set up those plots and how to back off gradually and work at it, not right away.

39:49 Because you can back off really aggressively on a small plot to see what the effects of that would be. And then you use that information to make your decisions for next year because you could try any number of things on small plots and be learning for the following year. But you can't risk your farm by just pulling the plug on everything all at once.

40:17 No. And that's why I love the small plots because that's why I do a zero fertilizer plot. Why? I want to know what the microbes do by themselves. Where is your soil? If you don't do a zero plot, the information is worthless. It's allowing your soil to speak and says, 'Look, look at all the microbial community and look at the health.' By the way, how come I came up with 100 bushels with zero fertilizer? Where did that come from? So I always use that reference because then you start to realize what your microbial community does without the.

40:56 Fertilizers, without those chemicals, without those tools. So I think that's the thing that's why these plots are so important.

41:06 Yeah. And again you can get a lot of encouragement from people who are doing that. You don't have to do all the plots yourself. Do some, get connected with others who are doing it and just build those networks, learn from each other. You know, one of the things that at one of the Nexus events last year that we went to, we had one of our customers from Minnesota was there, organic farmer, and he was showing how he was growing mustard. So he planted soybeans in 30-inch rows and then interceded mustard in between the rows. And he would let that mustard get all the way up to where it was blooming really good. You know, the soybeans were already yay high and then he would go through and just roll that mustard down organic, you know, so he can't just spray it out. But he would roll that mustard down in between the rows of soybeans and, you know, had good weed control. He was helping control soybean cist nematode with those with that mustard.

42:03 And it's like, oh yeah, we should try that. So we tried some this spring in some plots and we didn't just do mustard, but we did, you know, rye and oats and flax and buckwheat and mustard and really liked what we saw and are definitely going to be doing more this next spring because of what we learned. But part of that was inspired by having, you know, that conversation and interacting with, you know, that customer from Minnesota. And it inspired things in us to try even though we're not organic. We're not in Minnesota, but it triggered why can't we try this and why can't we take that and build on it and do different things? And so that's what I love about it. And you know, a lot of us, it's been a long time since we've been to college, but tuition is expensive.

42:57 And if you, you know, say you spend, you know, $500, $600 to come to one of these events, but the amount of information you're going to come away with, that's pretty cheap education, right?

43:08 One of the things that really has bothered me what we did in the United States, we have enabled people and gave no value to education. One of the things that I have seen and one of the things that I was taught in the Peace Corps. If I feed a man a fish for one day, I feed him for a day. But if I teach him how to fish, I feed him for a lifetime. When you go to these nexuses, it teaches you about how to financially be free, how to be, how to have freedom farming and how it and get away from being enabled. And our government and I work for an agency that we felt like giving free things were good. It didn't help. Giving things has hurt our tribal people, has hurt all of our other people that are in poverty and we forget the most important thing that all humans want is dignity. Dignity. But if you enable even with our kids, I've noticed if I enable my kids and don't let them go through the struggles and learn because they become strong and they learn dignity for themselves and they learn that integrity and dignity. That's what people want and you should want that. If you don't, then you've got a problem. But agriculture is no different. And how do we, how do we not enable people, but how do we help them down this path and strengthen them? And I think that's the beauty about the Nexus conference is how do you, how do you take it to that next level? How do you learn and willing to learn and it's a humbling experience. It's a good experience to be there.

44:58 Yeah, it is. And so, you know, I think Ray, as we kind of bring bring this to a close, we would encourage you if if you feel like this is an event for you to reach out to us. We will be having

45:10 Two chances, two events. One will be in Scottsdale, Arizona in January and one will be in Omaha, Nebraska in the middle of February. So we would love to have you there. If you are a regeneratively minded producer who is interested in both learning and sharing, please reach out to us and let us get you the information that you need and then you can decide if this is something for you or not. Please reach out to us. We would love to see you there and we'd love to learn from you as well as be able to help you learn from others as well.

45:46 Ray, thank you so much for joining us. I know you're a super busy guy. You've been on six continents. There's not a lot of soil health going on in Antarctica, I assume.

45:58 No, no, I think it's buried under ice. But one of the thing I want to add, Keith, is that what you do really well in these events, the food is excellent. I get really frustrated when we go all over the world. You're right, Keith. I've been in thousands of conferences and I'll stand up and it's less than a couple of percent where the food is really good. I always have this saying, you can have A+ speakers, but if the food sucks, you go down to a C minus.

46:31 Keith strives to bring good people that do a good job cooking. And I love that facility where we go in Arizona. They do a good job with the food and that means a lot.

46:43 Yeah, it does. And I'll be honest with you, Ray, when what we charge for people to come is basically covering the cost of the food. Food, good food at really nice places is expensive. And so we have a lot of meals together. Some events that you go to, there's hardly any meals provided, but the meals are such rich times where people gather together around the table and share and learn. So we don't want to sacrifice that. We do spend a lot of time thinking about the food, thinking about how can we allow people to eat together, break bread together because it's powerful ways to connect.

47:27 Come and build community with us. Heath and I would love to see you in Phoenix and I hope you guys get a lot out of it. I really hope your lines Keith. Everybody wants to come and but I hope so. Thank you Keith for having me. I appreciate your work and your family, what you guys do and the commitment for agriculture throughout the country. Come and learn, freedom farm. Come learn how to be free. It's worth it.

48:02 There you go. And thank you, Ray, for all the good work you're doing. I know you're going to be on the road again soon and traveling all over the place. We are grateful for your friendship as well as all your input. And thank you for coming to Nebraska last week. It was great to have you here and we look forward to seeing you soon. Folks, again, if you are interested in coming to one of these events, reach out keith@greencover.com or shelby@greencover.com. We would love to get you the information. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Green Cover podcast.

48:37 My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska. But we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops. That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed put into the right diverse mixes along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for future generations.