Growing Alternative Crops: What Three Farmers Learned About Chickpeas, Rye, and Specialty Markets

0:00 Diann sunflowers giant sunflowers. Russian mammoth sunflowers as well. Russian mammoths there you go. I actually have a picture I think of in this exact field. I was actually standing out in it with my hand straight above my head as far as I could reach and all you could see was my fingertips. It's pretty cool.

0:21 Was this something you were growing in Colorado out of there? Yeah, yeah, they were probably the best sunflowers we ever grew. Yeah, that's impressive. We get too much rain here for that. Is that what that is? There he is. John, doesn't that sound like a terrible problem to have? Yeah, that's a different problem for sure.

0:52 So before we get started, I guess where I'm not super familiar—I guess either with where Jeff's at or where John's at. I guess John, you're in Colorado. Is that correct? Yep, I'm in the northeast corner. Gets about 17 inches of annual rainfall.

1:13 And how about you, Jeff? I'm northeast Nebraska. We get about 28 inches and my growing zone is more like southern South Dakota more than Nebraska.

1:33 Welcome, Jordan. I might be getting just a little bit of tractor noise. I might mute you until you're ready.

1:56 No, I'm going to go dark here and I'll be answering questions off in the chat. Okay, we might pull you in for just a couple of them, but yeah, that's fine.

2:19 I'm going to go ahead and start. Facebook, joined with the best background of everybody. I'm jealous. If I turn around, it's a distant third in farming.

3:12 All right, I think we got everybody here, so I'll just wait another probably a minute and we'll go ahead and get started. Thanks, guys, for taking a break from planting. It's hard because it was probably the worst time to try and get a panelist together of farmers, but it's also the best time because everybody's kind of thinking about it. So we do appreciate you guys taking time out of your day to help us out.

3:45 Okay, thanks for asking me. So most people I've seen in a long time. Social distancing is a part of your everyday life, John? Yeah, yeah, I mean even when I go to town you might only see two people. So I find that my personality kind of is an automatic social distancer.

4:22 Alright, well we'll go ahead and get started here. First, just kind of go over the ground rules again and then we do this every week, but all the attendees are going to be muted at this point. If you guys have questions, you can go ahead and type them out in the chat bar on the side. Keith is with us and he'll be answering those as they come in. Otherwise, you can wait and let's called raise your hand and we'll go ahead and let you ask your question live if you want to do that.

4:51 This week is a little bit different. We've been doing a couple of presentation-type webinars. This week we wanted to switch focus a little bit as we've seen a shift in the economy, obviously with farm prices the way they are with the commodities and inputs don't seem to be going down respectively. So we are just noticing an interest in growing other crops, alternatives to corn and beans and even soybeans and wheat and cotton. So we got a panelist here of producers that have grown or at least tried to grow a couple different things, so wanted to get their input and answer your guys's questions on some of the challenges that they've faced growing alternative crops.

5:37 So I guess just to start off, I don't have any biographies or anything on you guys, but we'll start here with John. Why don't you go ahead and just kind of tell us where you're located and what kind of crops you grow at your farm? I'm down here, man. I'm from Haxton, Colorado. It's the northeast corner. We get about 17 inches of rainfall. In my past, like ten years ago, although we were growing was wheat and some millet and doing a lot of summer fallow, but the last five to eight years, kind of diversified a lot. So I've grown a number of things for the seed market or specialty markets. So now I like right now I got rye growing with hairy vetch and I have some winter peas growing with winter wheat. I'm about to plant chickpeas with flax. I have some woolly pod vetch growing with yellow peas. I'll be planting some milo with some companions and I have some cover crops already seeded, some early spring seeds.

6:51 And cover crops for grazing will also be seeding some warm season cover here shortly for grazing. I've also, what else is that, girl might grow some millet I guess that's kind of all I can think about that I've grown right now. Okay, that kind of covers it. I've been trying to get into more companion crops and kind of growing more than one thing at one time.

7:28 Next we've got Jeff Stephan and Jeff, why don't you go ahead and just tell us a little bit about yourself and what crops you grow. Yeah, I'm Jeff Stefan. I'm from northeast Nebraska. We get about 28 inches, so it's traditional corn soybean area. There's some livestock dose so alternative crops I'm growing, you know, with cover crops is growing multi-species cover crops for grazing. We're corn and soybeans, but also have eyes grown a lot of oats. I work with South Dakota State on their newer varieties and even though my oats is all grown proceed, I am interested in demonstrating how we can use the milling market here, grain rollers is in our area as far as a possibility for marketing oats that way.

8:30 I also have some companion crops this year. I have some winter rye and winter peas. I plan to take the harvest and for the guy that doesn't want too much adventure, our best alternate crop right now is non-GMO soybeans. I work with Iowa State. I get their foundation seed and we sell non-GMO soybeans for over the board, 25, 20, 25 cents over the board and goes up to soybean processor in South Dakota for non-GMO soybean meal and I'm also growing some high-protein large seeded food grade soybeans from Iowa State genetics that I am still working on the market. So I think you're supposed to do that opposite market first then grow it but I got some proceed now so that's some of the things I'm working on now.

9:34 Perfect. That I'll have a question for you here coming up this event. Exactly around that, next up we've got Jordan Carlson. Go ahead and yeah, it looks like you got, do you finish planting all your beans today? I finished the field as we got started here.

9:54 Yeah, I'm from Callaway, Nebraska and right in central Nebraska basically it's corn and soybean area and that's primarily what we do is corn and soybeans with irrigated, probably 80% irrigation where we farm. So yeah, what I started doing basically as soon as I started farming 10, 11 years ago as yellow field peas and that that led to other things like multi-species cover crops. As you know, with extra opportunity app after pea harvest, you know it gave us that opportunity to do that. Since then been doing more oats, rye, even some buckwheat here and there and some other things that we're just dabbling around with, growing together sometimes just for our own cover crop seed that you know use on our own farm. We're using probably 3,000 bushel of rye just to cover our corn and bean acres and the fall so we'll grow our own and grow more for either neighbors or just wholesale seed market that kind of thing.

11:26 Okay, we also have a Ska training camp on and he is our contract grower manager. So we wanted to have some his insight from the actual marketing side. He is in all of our contract acres of green covers and actually acquiring the cover crop seed. So we wanted his input. Scott, why don't you give a little bit of background about yourself. So before I started working for green cover, I farmed for about 25 years in eastern Colorado, was probably actually close to being a neighbor of John's. It was about a hundred 150 miles from him. So when I started farm and just like John, it was traditionally a wheat fallow area. We transitioned over to where when we quit farming we was not growing any of the crops that we were growing when I'd started farming. All the crops we were raising when we quit farming in eastern Colorado was stuff we were not growing when I started. So it was quite the transition over 25 years. My wife and I just decided we needed a change a pace in life, moved up to northeast Nebraska now and they were of Jeff's so got to two neighbors on one one webinar here tonight.

12:43 Yeah, so when it comes to these specialty crops that's touched on it, you kind of

12:48 Marketing is probably one of the biggest things. Even when we're in Colorado, that's what we found—the marketing was a big part of whatever we grew. It isn't typically something that you can just haul into the local elevator and get a check that afternoon. You kind of need to have a plan on what you're gonna do with it and where to go with it. So that's probably the biggest thing. I have that here: whatever it is you're gonna grow, you kind of need to have a plan on what you're gonna do with it and how to handle it. That's just the biggest change you'll face when you just can't haul it into the elevator and get a check for it.

13:26 Rounding up our panelists, we've got Dale Strickler from Foods. He's done several of our webinars here—he's our sales agronomist so we kind of brought him on board for the agronomy side of things. And we also have Keith who will be answering some of the questions here on the side chat. So just to kick things off, I guess for each of you: what was your, I'd say breaking point but more like your inspiration for trying to grow other things? Is it something that your parents did, or was there a moment for you where you decided I'm gonna try something different? We'll start with Jordi here.

14:06 I don't know if once there was a breaking point. I mean, I started with yellow field peas and I think that idea probably came from Dwayne Beck at Dakota Lakes. My dad had tried it maybe a year or two before I got back and it didn't actually go very well. But for some reason when I started, I thought I would try it and put it on probably more acres than I should have. And there the guys are right—I mean, you need a market before you start, but that wasn't the way I went about it. I just planted them because I wanted better wheat or better corn the next year. That, I think, was about as much thought as I put into it at the time. And I think that's a good thing. It turned out good that that's the way I did it or I probably wouldn't have done it. And I had a lot of beginner's luck—I had a great crop. But the marketing thing was what ended up being what was tough. We ended up having to haul them probably five hours up into South Dakota. And it all worked out because I had a good crop.

15:19 But you know, I wouldn't say there was a breaking point necessarily. I think all along for me, the reason to do an alternative crop or specialty crop or whatever has usually been something I want to do in my field. I want diversity. I want the following crop to benefit. And then from trying different things, I've seen other opportunities and ways to do that. So that's my motivation for alternative crops. I wish I could say that it was, hey, I saw a better money-making opportunity every time. Once in a while that's happened, but usually it's been looking at the soil and the crop rotation and seeing something that I wanted to accomplish there, and then finding a market or finding a way that I could do it. A lot of times I say finding a way I can afford to rotate or afford to try an alternative crop.

16:28 That's it for me. Jeff, would you say you've had a similar experience, or what was it like in your situation?

16:37 You know, I kind of blame it on going through the eighties and barely making it through the eighties. And then when you're in trouble, it's too late to try different things. So during the commodity boom times, we kind of phased out of raising hogs. That's when I started looking into alternative markets for alternative crops. I guess I just figured, like in the eighties when times are really good, that means at some point times are gonna get worse. So I think that's what led me more to this more than anything. And then interest in conservation and health kind of helped it too.

17:27 John, how about yourself?

17:30 Well, out here in Colorado, in my area, they kind of only grow wheat—guys still just grow wheat. And I know I grew up with the mindset that that's all you could grow. Then when you go to some of these conferences or talk to other growers, they kind of open your eyes that there's a lot of things out there that you can grow. And to me, the challenge of growing something new and learning something different is kind of fun. And along those same lines, when you start running the numbers and trying to cashflow some of it.

18:08 These common crops that you just haul to the elevator stuff doesn't always pencil out very good. So if you can find another market and something that's a better revenue stream or something that you're willing to do, then that helps the whole farm. And with one of the things I really like about growing these different things too is it spreads out my workload throughout the year. Now I'm not out there in a tractor and drill drilling wheat for three weeks and then in the combine for three weeks during the summer. And then you're always busy at that, you know you're always overloaded and trying to get the same crops done at the same time. So I really like throwing some of these different things in, and I'm not, you know I'm busy, but it's a staggered busy and kind of just a constant flow. And I'm not out there in the combine for weeks on end, you know, what kind of staggers throughout the year. So I kind of like that too.

19:09 Okay, for you guys, you all touched on markets, so I kind of want to get that over with here. What did you guys do to market these products? And obviously some of you guys said that you grew at first and then found the market. But how are you guys finding those markets? What innovative ways did you market that product?

19:49 You know, so there's some other elevators around my area like the Redwood group. They've been taking some specialty stuff like flax and chickpeas and some of the yellow feeds and some of the other things like that. So they've kind of opened up a little bit of a local market, and you know that one was kind of already here just starting and they're kind of searching for growers. So that one kind of came upon me. As far as the other ones, you know, just kind of ask in the looking around at some of the farmers who are planting cover crops—what are they needing for feed? If they're needing rye or some peas or something like that, you know you can always look in your local area and see where they're getting their seed from. Then just reaching out to some of the seed growers and seeing, you know, people like Scott, and asking them what do you need grown or what do you want dried? And then just trying to build a good relationship. Got, you know, high quality weed seed and high-quality product will get you a long ways too, I think. And I think doing it, you know, if you're farming in a regenerative way or using cover crop practices, and farming a little bit different, it helps the quality of your product as well.

21:15 Yeah, I'd say it's pretty similar for me. I'm starting with peas. What I hadn't invested in, seed cleaning equipment, and went into certified seed there. And that market for us is, you know, it went from I couldn't find a place to go, you know, closer than five hours away, to now we have closed markets. But our commodity pea price has dropped a fair bit with tariffs from India and just everything else going on in commodities. But so some of that stayed off. But the same thing to some degree, finding seed markets, things that we need and other cover crop growers need in the seed market has been probably the biggest one. We did look at opportunities to sell buckwheat to Japan. And I mean no green cover was in on that with us, but there just was some uncertainty there that we didn't want to deal with, so we just shied away from that. But that's been it. I mean really, if I had, you know, we talked earlier today like Scott and I, that if you know I could grow with thousand acres of oats and be profitable with that, I would love to. Great, you know, I could do a lot of things from my soil and I could do a lot of things after that crop. But really for me, marketing has been a challenge. But it's something that I'm willing to put the effort into marketing because I don't like calling yellow corn to the elevator and just, you know, barely getting by. So I found that what I do grow an alternative crop or grow have a good rotation with cover crop in it. I can on the other hand grow yellow corn or soybeans profitably with less cost. It's not dramatic and it's sometimes hard to pick out, but when you start looking at it it's like well I didn't have the pest challenges that I used to.

23:39 I didn't have the fertilizer input that I would have had if I just done corn on corn. So even within the commodity crops that we're growing some food grade white corn, popcorn, things like that. So even within that we're just trying to diversify a little bit.

24:02 I found that even in commodity marketing, I'm not very good at it and I don't know a lot of people who really are consistently. For me it's taken the pressure off of that. If I can take some acres or bushels or however you want to look at it and have something else to market that might be more profitable when corn isn't or vice versa, I've seen that that's just added a little bit of stability for me, diversifying.

24:42 Yeah, like Jordan and John, I know similar with you know, he started with growing. I was growing oats that we had a local market and I would always research for the universities and look for the better seeds and then pretty soon your neighbors want some and that's basically how I accidentally got into crop improvement and growing seed from the legal standpoint of view.

25:13 So our local market has basically gone away on oats. The elevator nearby, elevators don't take oats anymore, but in the last couple of years like Grain Millers has actually came to Yankton, South Dakota promoting oats. You know, somewhat of a niche market, our oats is a little earlier ready, a little bit earlier than when they get it down from Canada or North Dakota. If we can get the specs, I always say you know about a third my crops are specialty, probably a niche market you'd call them, but I spend two thirds of my time on them. So there's a little bit of work in there but there's a margin and you know that's the main thing. A margin is better than no margin.

26:10 The soybeans, beans I was raising seed. That's I got the interested in genetics first and then I accidentally found out we had a local market for it. So I run them in test plots with my best local soybeans with Enlist and Roundup Ready and we're getting similar yields and no tilling was no big deal. I was no tilling soybeans before there was Roundup Ready beans so I just kind of went back to the way I was doing it. But yeah some of those markets kind of just fell in after I got the interest in growing it I guess, but it's kind of how it works.

27:20 So you know so far we've been able to as far as planting and harvest pretty much get by with what we had. I mean I've made a bigger investment you know and drilling equipment but that's partially because we're going to cover a lot of acres with cover crop too. So that's something we may not have had. There was a little bit of harvest equipment for the peas at that time but yeah it's a significant amount of money and seed cleaning equipment. But that to me has just created more opportunities, things I can do for myself that I wouldn't have been able to and sometimes just wholesale markets I can get into. You know since I have that kind under my belt already, but it also is a lot of work and it's not fun work a lot of the time.

28:23 But like Jeff says sometimes when you're working hard in it, it's extra work and you're spending your time on those niche things. That it's at least if you can say hey there was a margin in it at the end, that's encouraging especially at a time when you sometimes can't pencil a margin on your commodity crops and that kind of takes the edge off of the work on some of those days.

29:00 In for free harvest and planting equipment, did you have to make a lot of changes for that? You know we always had a drill I probably

29:12 You know, ended up buying a better drill as far as no-till drill. But we always had a drill, we always had the seed cleaning equipment would be the one thing like Jordan says, and it gives you so much flexibility on what you can do. I can harvest a companion crop and separate them and do things like that. And you know, that gives you something you can market over. It would be tough if I didn't have it sitting there. You basically really tough to find somebody to clean seed for you.

29:54 So other than that, I have pretty general equipment. I do own my own self-propelled sprayer, and that's a huge thing when you have a lot of multi crops because it's a lot of specialty type mixes you're coming up with.

30:15 Okay, how about you, John? As far as my equipment, I tried to kind of grow things and keep the same equipment that I had that I was already using for crops I was going before, such as weed and millet. So all the specialty crops I plan, I still use my same drill and still use the same harvest equipment. I had a Shelborne already Shelborne stripper head, so I use that for a lot of the crops that maybe aren't conventionally combine with the stripper head, but they seem to work alright with it.

30:53 So I guess the one thing that equipment-wise or something you don't think about is storage because a lot of time you aren't growing a tremendous amount of acres of these specialty crops. So you need, in my experience, you need a lot of smaller bin storage as opposed to the large bin storage of one cash crop. And you have all these four or five bins a quarter or something full of something different. So that's kind of been a challenge but something I didn't think about. And when you get a combine, anything, oh where am I gonna put this house?

31:31 Yeah, they also the cleaning equipment too, but I mean that's opened up a lot of different things like previous guys were saying. And it seems like so well, yeah, go ahead. I think it is hard to find someone to clean this stuff, and so it kind of almost forced to buy your own stuff and do it yourself, especially doing inter crops or companion crops. I mean, it's one thing to clean one crop. When you're throwing two of them together and you kind of gotta have special equipment and be set up to do it yourself.

32:11 Yeah, and maybe Scott here would be a good time for you to maybe talk about from a buyer's standpoint what kind of things are you looking for in the market? A lot of these guys talked about cleaning seed. What are you looking for as a contract buyer for these crops?

32:28 Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest changes guys will have to go from general commodities. You know, if you raised corn or soybeans or wheat, you have a little bit of wheat dockage in it. It's usually not a big deal if you're just taking it into the elevator. Some of the noxious weeds can be fine in your state, but they're not in another state. So it's pretty tight tolerances. It is a different world you're working in, and it's something you need to be aware of.

32:57 Definitely, when you're raising these crops, you know, it might be fine in your area, but if you're selling it in the seed market, you got to know what the other states are, and some of the tolerances are really tight. If there's a tolerance at all, some of it's zero. And so to be able to get to that tolerance level, it's definitely a different world that most guys are used to throwing on a general commodity crop because most time you can just haul it in the elevator and be done with it. But that's not the way it works in the seed world.

33:29 Yeah, so that kind of goes into the next question of some of the challenges that people will face with this, especially if it's their first time. One of the challenges that people often talk about would be the crop insurance side of things. Do any of you, I guess as growers, have anything to say on crop insurance or has that not been an issue?

33:55 I'd say a lot of times we're just going without, and that's not always a bad thing. You have risk. If you can't afford that risk, you shouldn't do it, but you don't have that expense. And sometimes some of these early spring crops, if you don't have a lot in them, they could just be a cover crop if something goes wrong early. So you have some flexibility there, but for the most.

34:24 On the specialty crops you go without the insurance. Mihal insurance in almost every case has been available taking advantage of that.

34:42 I don't ever insure any of my specialty crops and normally it's a spring crop. I always have a full cover crop that's coming behind it. I can graze the peppers and whatnot. It's just a low input deal and I have it. You have to bear the risk but I've never had a problem wasn't having no insurance on that stuff.

35:16 I'm the same way. I don't have insurance on any of that stuff. I think the one thing there is by doing the crop rotation and kind of diversifying yourself and having low input, I mean some of these specialty crops if you're doing continuous crop and following something else now you might only be in the crops and see and maybe a little herbicide or something in your drilling cost but I think by not having the insurance it's helped me pencil things out more effectively and be conscious and watch my cost more closely since I do have that risk for that particular crop.

36:02 That's an excellent point. I think so many times we don't pay as much attention as we should just because of that insurance factor. So thanks for bringing that up. I guess in the input side of things, can you guys watch on your chemical and fertilizer program? Is there a big difference between that? There's a pretty standard and John why don't you go ahead and start.

36:27 The last five years I've really cut back on things compared to what I was using and compared to what other people are using. I'm just by having the rotation and between the soil health principles and integrating cover crops I've been taking a lot of Haney tests on my ground to show me what fertility recommendations I need. Like this last year I grew a crop, a chickpea flax, so by trying to get some legumes out there but I was still having a broadleaf in there to keep some residue on my ground to catch some snow. But I went, I combine that as soon as I left to feel at the combine I went right back to rye and some hairy vetch and Haney tests I did this spring came back and said to grow 45 bushel rye and I didn't put any fertilizer down with my rye whatsoever and it said I needed 10 pounds of N was all I needed to grow that, a decent rye crop. So I even go out there with the spray or anything. I put no fertility on that rye and I just pulled some sap analysis and it's kind of like a tissue thing to monitor the plant health and it's shown them they could within everything. So I think by taking a systems approach to it I've kind of reduced a significant amount of fertilizer and trying to change the crops and follow a low nitrogen crop but with a high carbon crop and vice versa. You can kind of use nature's where and kind of cycle things through the system.

38:16 Herbicides and stuff kind of a tough one because many of this stuff is not on the label. All the specialty stuff so you kind of got to do your research and you kind of go look at some of the publications about cover crop. Usually it's the cover publications you can find on herbicide tolerances and is that or maybe try and find some similar species on the herbicide label and kind of experience or asking someone or researching about that. That kind of is a tough one and one of the things with growing the inter crops is sometimes as you are limited especially if you're growing totally different like rye in winter peas, you know your herbicide options there once you get that in the ground are pretty much nothing unless you want to take out that broadleaf.

39:14 When I grow the inter crop things I still try and tailor my program so that I still have a main crop. So I'm still kind of focused say like on the rye winter peas, rye's still my main crop so I kind of tailor my program for that and if I don't have to end up spraying the winter peas because I got a clean field or something then you can add the benefit of the other crop in there so that's kind of helped me as well.

39:51 Yeah, the less rotation I use the more herbicide I have to use. So obviously I learned right away like on the oats there is zero tolerance for some things. Nobody wants any wild buckwheat which we have in our area. So this is the week we have to spray.

46:09 Yeah, I said those little things like that what you just said can be kind of a big deal. I had a neighbor find out the hard way with Iowa State stuff that he couldn't play it back on his own and was planning on it and he didn't plant them, but he had traded seed and everything before he figured it all out. So there's just a lot there that you have to know and try not to slip it up, I guess.

46:45 I would also add that I do know companies are monitoring that and I believe some of the universities are too, so don't think that you can skirt around it. It's a good way to get in trouble. We hear about it every year that somebody's trying to or has sold TV beat seed. So it's just, if you're going to get into the seed business, make sure you know what you've got into before you go to sell it.

47:14 So Scott, I guess from your perspective as a buyer, what are some of the biggest ones that you see in grower space? You know, first of all, try to have a home for it before you put it in the ground. That's probably the first thing. The second thing is when I talk to prospective growers, John touched on it—storage. We've got to have growers that have their own storage. It's just too big of a logistical issue to try to bring it straight out of the field to anywhere to get it clean. That's probably one of my first questions to all growers, and then the second one is how comfortable with what we're talking about you wanting to grow—are you going to be? Do you have any experience with this? Do you have the equipment to grow it, to harvest it? Those are usually the first two questions I ask all growers when I talk to them.

48:15 Okay, John, he brought you up there. Is the storage aspect of things what was the biggest challenge for you, or I mean, what has been the biggest struggle that you faced?

48:32 I would say probably just the lack of knowledge and not knowing how things are supposed to look when they're growing, or what seeding rate you're supposed to use, or when you're supposed to combine and what moisture it's supposed to be so that you can store it. I would say just the logistics and the knowledge of the actual crops would be the biggest challenge. Sometimes I just go on Twitter and ask. You know, I just ask a question because there's probably someone out there that's growing it or knows more about it than you, so it's just some of that stuff—trying to find someone that can help you out. Usually there's always someone that can help you out and give you a little bit of knowledge about what you're doing, but sometimes it's hard to find those people.

49:23 Jeff, what's the biggest challenge you face?

49:30 I'm thinking about adding some storage, maybe some hopper bottoms. Not only do you need multiple storage, but as in oats, it likes to go through a sweat. You have to cool it down, you know, even if you think it's dry. And it's a chess match when you have, you know, herbicides, just a combination of everything. But you know what, sometimes the challenge—it's kind of fun.

50:04 So for us, we kind of had some older bins that were set up nicely, but they're not real great for specialty crops as far as size. So we have added some cone bins and things like that and spent money on that. But yeah, the biggest challenge and the toughest thing for us is just these things actually are adding more work in times of the year that we didn't used to have that workload. So we haven't been able to eliminate the corn and soybean load as far as acres completely, you know. So we still have a big planting push and a big harvest push. You know, we're in the combine a long time, we're in the planter a long time, so it's added work. You know, harvests in the summer—things that we didn't always have to do—so that's something we've had to weigh out, you know, for family time. You know, just a lot goes into it. I think that's been the biggest challenge. There's been a lot of fun and like, there's a lot of joy in seeing something new growing, and you know, had a lot of fun with that. But we, you know, I think in 2017 we had like 10 different crops that we had to keep separate and harvest at different levels.

51:36 Know our commodity crops which were thousands of bushels but we had ten different things to manage and you know that was probably a little too much so we've scaled it back a little bit and focus on a few things and managing the time at work love has been kind of a tough thing for me and for our farm.

52:22 Definitely it's definitely more work I guess. Don't well you don't twiddle your thumbs I guess so you learning something new all the time and I got rid of most of my livestock but I'm still busy. A combination of cleaning seed and finding information on it and the marketing part of it, packaging, anything in it you know and I don't do that much but it's time-consuming. I say I'd rather I would rather just be a wholesaler and those retailers earn everything they get.

53:15 I'm going to open it up here to questions. I've got a couple more. Anybody has any questions here in the chat? There was one earlier on from James asked what is everyone usable cleaning equipment. Scott said most you guys are using clipper seed cleaners or rotary screen cleaners. Is our corrector? I have a really old but a really good Crippen and I really like it I can fine-tune it and I don't know if possibly looking for another one here at some point but that's what I have now.

53:56 I actually have a fairly new bench industries at Montana set up on wheels. I have a rotor ranges for separating vics from balls and I was using a clipper 12:7 to do a lot of stuff. Super small machine but she had some time it would do the job. He didn't have a lot of commodity it would do. Now I got a just got a clipper 298 but it's also a 1958 model but they built things back then so they still work good.

54:40 So John you had mentioned that you'd like to go to Twitter when you're looking for some advice because somebody's groaning before, what is the best resource that you guys have used to learn some of the tips for growing these crops?

55:03 Sometimes if you read somebody's search on the internet or some old literature it seems like you can find a lot of those thesis crops or some of these weird ball crops they were all going back then and they got coming stuff about them. The conferences are very helpful. You go to any of those during the winter months because you can find someone that's probably there tried it and then I use Twitter a lot or Facebook. You can just search for a word or search for the crop on Twitter that your won't grow and up will pop all these posts and stuff and they can find the person maybe that knows what's talking about.

55:57 Yeah I'm not a Twitter user so I do a lot on the internet. I've always used University of Nebraska for a lot of research data and growing suggestions but you know now that's expanded all across the country as far as finding information and there is, if you look hard enough, there is old old information out there too, you know, that's been put on the internet now. How they get companion cropping, you know, 100 years ago things like that.

56:34 Jordan I've gotten a lot of information from conferences mainly and depending on the crop sometimes grower meetings, it's searching the internet, things like that. I think this is a good opportunity to say something I wanted to say about green cover. You know I bought my first PC from them I think in 2009 and they were, it was Keith and Brian in a Quonset building, and it's become something much more than that now but I think one of the biggest parts of their success has been those that are interested in cover crops and just farmers in general and I really appreciated that. I've learned things from their fields and meeting opportunities that they've had they've sponsored, you know conferences that I've been to and learned a lot out so that.

57:43 Interacting with other people, networking, finding somebody whether that's using Twitter, the internet, or a conference—that's been where we've learned the most.

57:58 One of the best ways that you can find something that might work good in your area is by doing some of these diverse cover crop cocktails for grazing or just to have them out there after a summer harvest. Or if you're not sure what you want to eat and grow, put some 20 species mixes out and see what grows good on your farm and how it performs, because there will be a couple things that don't do worth a hoot, but there will be one or two that shine and ease that might open your eyes to say hey, that might work pretty good on my farm, it's going really well out there.

58:47 That's kind of how I've discovered some of these things, finding them by accident, I guess. And I was not going to sales pitch or anything, but we do actually have a plot package. What we did is we took 25 different species and put enough to cover basically a half acre, and we're selling those for 400 dollars. Basically it's pretty much just at cost for us in order to allow guys to grow different things and see what will work in their area without having a huge investment. So if they can put aside a half acre and a hundred bucks, we'll even give that money back on credit if you're willing to do a field day or something. So that's an excellent way to learn what's going to work in your area and see what works in that climate, your soil type.

59:35 That kind of brings me to a question here from Steve, who's asking what are some alternative seed crop opportunities for northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Dale or Scott, you guys might have some thoughts there.

59:55 Probably the first one in southern Kansas is going to be a favor of all the neighbors. That rice is a good one, that's one of the easiest ones to start with, but it makes you real unpopular in wheat country. Triticale would probably be another one. Those would be your main cereals. I think then you could start looking into the mung beans, possibly the non-GMO soybeans, possibly some cow peas would be another one that you could get in there if you're not already growing those. Those would probably be the easy major bulk cereals or any seed crop for that matter. Then after that you'd just be getting into the more specialized stuff that you really have to find a niche market for or a niche forage crop.

1:00:50 Dale, why don't you go ahead and talk about—we've got a couple minutes here—but alternative meat. Why don't you talk a little bit about the cattle being an alternative as well?

1:01:05 Some of my thought process comes from a conversation I was just having with someone. They were saying corn prices are horrible, bean prices are horrible, I can't make any money. I still have last year's corn in the bin and I hate to sell it. I've got last year's calves because they're ready to sell right during the epidemic and the price crash, and I don't want to sell them for this. And I said well, don't plant corn, don't plant beans, don't sell your calves. Plant pasture crops and add weight to your calves. And that way when all this blows over, instead of losing money on another acre of corn when we already have a mountain of corn, another acre of beans when we already have a mountain of beans, cut your input cost, plant some pasture crops, hands create of biology in your soil, build your soil fertility up by including some legumes in there, and make better soil. Add some weight to those cattle, give your pastures, your perennial pastures a break, and hopefully when all this blows over you have heavyweight calves to sell instead of lightweight calves to sell. And by grazing you've cycled all that fertility right back out on your ground instead of shipping it off in a grain truck and selling that grain for not much more than what you paid for the fertilizer in it. And the nice thing about all these different forage crops—you don't have to find the market, the market exists, it sits on the hoof in your livestock.

1:03:05 I'll give each of you a chance here. What's the best advice you could give to somebody that kind of wants to start? We'll start here about Jordan. Maybe not, but just grow something for fun. You probably have some acres or a couple feet or plot or something. Grow something you haven't seen before for fun. You'll always learn something, and that's what I've noticed. Any time I do something new or try something small-scale, big-scale, I usually have some fun somewhere in there. There might be some pain if I overdo it, but you can have some fun. I mean, even throwing a pumpkin seed on the edge of your last row of corn or something like that. Just, you know, and try to enjoy some of those things because sometimes it's just stressful to farm and do everything that we have to do. But I think I've just enjoyed seeing different crops grow. So that's what I would say: do something for fun, grow something for fun.

1:04:20 Yeah, I'd say start small. Maybe do a variation of something you've done in the past. A lot of us in the past have grown spring small grains, and it's just looking at it different. I forgot to mention before, and then the information is there. Jordan is right. I do get a huge amount of information from Gale Strickler and Keith Berns and YouTube and whatever on trying some new things. But the main things is probably something familiar with but a variation.

1:05:06 Well, I'm going to touch on a little bit of what everybody else has said so far, but a little bit of a different angle. I love what Jordan said: try something fun. You mentioned on your sales pitch your plot deal. That's why I loved Keith when he renamed it and took away the best name. I used to call it the flour mix, but it's the biological primer remix. I love that it took all the choices out of what you were going to plant. You just threw it out there. You could see what was going to grow. Like John said, you never knew what you might see. I guess I challenged guys on the start small thing though. If what you're doing isn't working, changing isn't going to hurt anything at that point. How I approached it: first year we pulled the trigger on planting rye. We found 700 acres of it. Had never grown it before. In two years we'd completely abandoned wheat. So I guess I always approach it like the wheat wasn't working, so changing was pretty easy to do. There's a saying out there I think Pharaoh says it: that it's pretty hard to be above average if you're doing the same thing everybody else is doing.

1:06:20 Best advice I would say is just do as much research as you can. Gotta learn as much as you can from other people and other people that have tried it or from Green Cover and know. Usually if you get some advice from someone, they'll give you a name or somewhere to look to find something else. And the more you can educate yourself and the more you can learn about something you want to do or if you're making the change, the better your chances are of being successful at it. And I think it's also a great idea. Jordan had mentioned it about doing something fun. When I started doing those cover crops and walking out in the fields, before I didn't realize how dead our monocultures and our soils and just the nature is out there when you walk into a crop field. But once you start planting the cover crops and some of these different intercrops and you start seeing life return, insects, it's just a different feeling when you look out there. My wife and kids, we go out there and pick cover crop flowers and stuff, and it's just watching all the butterflies and insects and stuff. So it is a lot more fun, and it's also fun to grow some of these different things.

1:07:44 Well, thank you guys so much for being a part of this. I know you guys are in a really busy time of year, so we do appreciate your willingness to share your experiences and your knowledge. With that, we're going to probably wrap up. Next week we're going to do a webinar on corn interceding with Keith and Dean Crowell, so we're really excited about that. It's another topic of much interest, so we're excited to talk about that and hopefully get some answers. Thanks again for tuning in and appreciate all your panelists. You guys have a great week.