Growing Seed in a Regenerative System: Jeff Steffen's Approach

0:00 Thanks everybody for joining us here. Today we know that there's always lots of options vying for your time, so we appreciate everybody taking some time to join us for this conversation.

0:11 So last week if you were with us at John Kimon, we really laid a good groundwork for why it's important to have good quality seed, some of the characteristics of what that good quality seed looks like, and then what things can we be doing as we grow that seed to really ensure that it's the highest quality possible. So if you haven't watched that, I would encourage you to go to our YouTube channel and watch that webinar because that's going to set the groundwork. Jeff and I will be referring back to that here as well. So if you haven't watched that, that'll be a great one to go back and watch.

0:46 This afternoon we have Jeff Stefen. Jeff is from Crofton, Nebraska, the Northeast part of the State. I don't know how long you've been growing seed for us, but I think you were one of the very first guys that started growing oats for us, probably more than 10 years ago, 10, 12, 13 years ago. I don't even remember when. You probably have a better memory than me. But Jeff is a great seed grower. He's been growing certified seed oats for many years up there in the Northeast part of the State. Really good oats growing country. But Jeff grows lots more things than just oats, and he'll talk about that a little bit as well.

1:23 And what we wanted to do is we wanted to feature some of our seed growers and not just talk about what they're doing to grow good quality seed for Green Cover and for customers, but to just kind of open up and share about their whole operation. Because what makes a good seed grower is a good management system, and it's not just about growing the seed. It's what happened the year before and the year before that, and what's going to happen the next year to make that system truly resilient and regenerative. And Jeff does a great job of that. He'll share some of his story in the different regenerative practices that he and his wife Jolene are using up there in Crofton, Nebraska.

2:06 Jeff, I'm excited for the conversation. Jeff's got some slides and pictures that he's going to share as he tells the story. So I'm going to go offscreen while he's doing that, and then when he's done, I'll come back on. We'll have a discussion and then we'll answer everybody's questions and continue the discussion that way. So Jeff, I'll turn it over to you.

2:26 Okay, thanks Keith. Yeah, remember being down by your place when there was just a few old bins there. So I don't know how many years ago that would be, but I'm sure it's been 10 or 12 at least. Yeah, back when we were young.

2:52 Okay, can we all see this? Yep, yep, you're good to go.

3:02 Well, thanks Keith. Yeah, I'm Jeff Stefen. This is a picture of our headquarters, I guess. And like Keith said, we've been working at farming regeneratively for quite a few years now. A big part of our rotation is having a cool season crop in the rotation. It's probably a third of our rotation now. Here's a picture of my wife with me. We're in a field of Milling Rye. Dano Milling Rye. Actually, Jolene mills our grain that we consume or whatever.

3:44 So we're usually growing quite a few different species of small grains. But oats is our favorite. We do have two grown children that have gone on to professional lives, but also have extended family and neighbors that we collaborate with that really help us out. But just to give you an example of the system, our seed is growing in this is just kind of an example of what the rotation looks like. We do have corn and beans, but even in the corn and bean years we're trying to incorporate cover crop. And down there in the bottom, that is interceding into corn. We experiment with that. We drill our soybeans into cover crop, and most recently, pretty much it's all drilled into green.

4:41 And a half inch rows kind of for weed control. And then on the top there is an example of an oats field, and we're convinced the health of it is a result of what we have—a rotation. And then as a result, having that cool season crop, we can go to fall season annuals after oats and graze them, and we've been able to show that you can have a quite productive farm farming that way.

5:17 So we grow for seed. This is just some of the examples actually: buckwheat, peas, cereal rye. We grow non-GMO soybeans. We have a license out of Iowa State that we grow. Hemp seed, heritage corns—we mess with, mainly we use them for grazing. But that is probably the bulk of our special acres other than corn and beans. Historically, it's been a good region for oats, and we have just enough coolness in late summer to keep the test weights up. And at one point or another, all of these types of seeds have gone to Green Cover, and it's been a great relationship back and forth, learning about the seed industry and trying to get the quality that they want.

6:22 So I do my own conditioning. I'm in the Crop Improvement Association, so it's a pretty humble affair, but we run a lot of bushels through this. We have a cleaner, and as far as crop improvement is concerned, I'm my own conditioner, so I can send samples right off my farm to be certified.

6:50 So the process for certifying seed—for one thing, I had to join Nebraska Crop Improvement Association, and this is for your PVP seeds that are protected. So like the oats, the Fres Mars that we're now growing, that has to be gone through this process before we can sell it. Like I said, we join the Nebraska Crop Improvement Association. We obtain foundation seed from them, and then we apply for field inspection. So our fields are inspected prior to harvest, and that is also a learning—you learn a lot with that back and forth as far as your disease and your weed pressures. There's certain things you can have in oats to have it certified. And then after harvest, if the field is okay, the seed is conditioned and a sample sent to Nebraska Crop for final certification.

7:53 Even the non-patented seeds that we raise, they still need samples sent to a lab for analysis legally to sell it.

8:06 So what I'll go into here is just a little bit of example of the rotation and the principles we use in our production now. Oats—historically in Cedar County, I was looking up the data this last week—in the '70s our oats yields were 93% of our corn yields, which is very interesting. And then through the years, people started saying we can't grow good oats anymore, and to me it's like we weren't paying attention to details and raising our oats. Also, oats likes really good, high organic matter ground. It doesn't seem like you can replace it just with fertility to grow it.

9:00 So here's some oats. We spend a lot of time setting the drill. I like to—we've been no till for probably 35 years—I like to make sure the oats is always set below all residue into firm soils, because what I'm shooting for is even emergence, basically like you would want with your corn crop. No fertility is put on this field at this point. We're trying our concentration now is to make the soil food web work. So basically, this field has a stacked, extended rotation. At this point, there hasn't been oats in this field for quite a few years. No fertility is put on this field except for compost extract. And I forgot to mention—Jolene has just finished the alum course, so it's something new that we've been into: applying biologicals to our seed.

10:08 At this point the oats is the only fertility it's had. Compost extract the seed and at this point we usually will put on an ALS herbicide and a low rate of a 2,4-D product, MCPA to handle annual weeds that crop improvement doesn't want to see in the samples so that would be the only herbicide application on this field for this year.

10:33 We also are no-tilling into irrigated corn stocks where you really have to concentrate on getting your seed depth down underneath the residue, but we found with good soil structure you can plant oats quite deep and you will get good emergence. I feel the key is even emergence and an even population where you have excess population you won't have the same tillering. So we're shooting for a million seeds an acre to get the proper tillering we want for more oat heads.

11:15 So here's when we finally put some fertility on this is kind of in the late vegetative stage. We'll stream on some U, probably some sulfur. I'm looking into and want to put add humix to this fertilizer but this is the total fertility put on this oats field. I think it was 40, this year was 47 units. This is a picture from a few years ago but we just stream it on in 10-inch, 10-inch bands.

11:48 This is a picture of oats. This is about the time that crop improvement inspects it. You can see we have really good health here. We use no insecticide, fungicide, and no desiccant on our oats.

12:08 What's amazing is the last several years how we've seen problems with insects and diseases slowly disappear because what we're showing here are ripe conditions for disease when you have these humid mornings where the oats is wet until noon. I'm not sure if it's a combination of the long-term practices we've been doing but also the breeding. This is from South Dakota State where they're constantly breeding for more resistance.

12:42 So this brings us to the harvest time. Generally we've been harvesting our oats intact, you know, without swathing it. Generally we like to carry the head as high as we can to clip the heads off. What this picture shows is this oats was really heavy and we had a heavy rain on it and we had quite a bit of lodging, so we're having to go down low on it. So you need to spend a lot of time with the combine getting the residue spread. Our goal is to leave almost all our straw on the field. We're really concentrating on trying to get more carbon in the system.

13:27 This is really good oats right here. The yield monitor was running a little over 170 in this particular part of the field. Once we harvest seed it needs to directly go on air. When you harvest direct like this, even dry oats will go through a sweat, so we put it on drying floors with large capacity drying fans and monitor the oat through the summer and in the fall. I make sure I always cool it down, actually get it pretty cold. That's cold and dry is good for insect resistance in the seed.

14:14 This is more what I like to see for after-harvest oats. You can see this oats was standing well because immediately after harvest our goal is to have a cover crop drilled into it. What's amazing is even this was a pretty dry part of the year, right here the oats had died on its own and with all this cover there was still moisture under that stubble so we got our seeds to emerge.

14:48 So then in the summer, this is what really supercharges our system. And like this is an example of a mix that I would put in if it's going to corn the next year. Usually when I figure out my mixes I go to Green Covers Smart Mix calculator to figure out the amounts and I think that has really been beneficial. And I can't raise all these seeds, but my interest after listening to John Kemp and Dr. James White is my interest now is to get as much diversity in the system as possible.

15:34 White talk about the diversity of Exodus we want to get in the soil to get to get the biology for nutrient cycling and for resistance of diseases and also in the system. I mean, this is your chance to get the regenerative cycle going and like he talks about the 52 days. This is probably 52 days and when you can get this kind of growth and with this much diversity, what's going on here? I'll, this will have a tale for several years for what it does to the soil.

16:16 Now that the cover crop, this cover crop, was, this is more for what I a mix I would plant before corn. This is more an example of if it's going to beans the next year. I would prefer to have some more serums in that. We're going to be working on that but basically as a result of looking at the Smart mix calculator, we're coming up with mixes and we put in if it's going to corn or soybeans.

16:50 So after growing all that forage, you know we do generally harvest probably half of it and we have family with a lot of cows. It's never a problem in getting numbers that way, so we'll generally have cows all winter on various fields and generally they need next to zero hay, close to almost no hay. You can see there with the snowfall or the snow on this cover crop here, still really good forage qualities. This past winter, the only hay we fed was during blizzard events.

17:31 And I have, I've been keeping more detailed numbers on the fall and winter grazing. Probably don't have time to talk about it as much right now, you know we're concentrating on the seed part. But as far as having rotation, you know this is several years ago and normally I'm planting green now. But after having cows on this over the winter time, it's just amazing how you can help with your weed control. There's no burndown been applied to this field yet. It's May 5th and look at the wheat control we have and this has gone to non-GMO soybeans, which we get a premium on even selling the commodity, so it's just a part now for getting weed control.

18:24 So here's late June in that field. We drill in 7 and a half inch rows. A lot of times people go away from that because of disease problems. We've been finding with our extended rotation, even in these types of situations when you have weather that causes disease, we're having very little. We have not applied any insecticide or fungicides since 2011 and we have never applied fungicide on oats.

19:00 Also have corn in our rotation. We plant mostly non-GMO corn and we, this past year, we probably plant half of our corn was probably non-treated seed and we had some interesting studies with it. The Spiel is example corn field planted in the soybean stubble. UNL has a monitor out there for moisture. We're doing a cover crop study. It was replicated a couple times. Are you hearing me?

19:43 Now yes, we can still hear you Jeff. Okay, it just said it was unstable here. Yeah, it's lagging, it's lagging a little bit but it's not too bad. Okay, let's talk slower.

19:59 This was an interesting study actually. The cover crop corn did nine bushels better. It was mainly probably because of weed control, you know. We're really having trouble getting ahead of the resistant weeds. But also this is unplugged into terminated cover crop. It was just interesting even in this condition how, you know, we had a really good stand. We did apply compost extract on this corn seed. It's the first time we've tried it. We don't have really good data on it yet, but as you can see the corn looks really well. There we don't apply any fertilizer to our corn until it's up. You know, we've been trying to concentrate on what can the biology do for us.

20:56 Getting the plant going, getting the soil food web going. Right about this stage I probably streamed on at about 50 units of nitrogen. So this field on the right here that produced 182 bushels, 50 units of nitrogen was the only fertilizer put on. The field on the left here is an irrigated field with a script with some 60-inch rows after cereal rye. You can see the really good cover. This is also untreated seed, and all fertility was put on post. I think this had 120 units, but you can see the good weed control, very little post herbicide, and also really no signs of a nitrogen deficiency. Despite the talk about that residue and the cereal rye tying up nitrogen, you can see really good shows really good health. These are just examples of the system we run that our seed production has going on.

22:18 There's been a lot more interest lately, especially in our operation, in actually going to some annual grazing where the only crop for the year is growing cows. We do this on the right, which is Jimmy red corn grazing, which I call grazing in the shade on a hot day. We've had really good luck with that, but it is more of a later summer grazing period. So our interest is to probably go more to a diverse mix. Even though this picture is after an oats crop, we want to go to where we have some cool season cool-season grasses in the spring and then a full summer cover crop grazing without corn because we'll probably rotate the corn. And then we can get some data on what does the income look like on that. We've been getting a lot of questions on whether this is something we can economically do with our low commodity prices to go into summer annual grazing.

23:34 I'll touch just a little bit on economics. I do quite a bit of work on economics and have been working on this since 2015, working with UNL and their crop budgets and trying to put hard numbers to the gains we're getting with our system. This is just a graph of our 2023 farm results on our 500-acre system, and what it's comparing to is if our farm would have just been corn and beans with traditional inputs. The blue bars represent our extended rotation actual numbers from this year, and the red bar uses UNL recommendations for inputs run through an agronomist with yields for a corn-bean system.

24:29 You can see my revenue is generally lower. This is figuring even though I sell seed, we're figuring the value of the grain before it goes into the seed enterprise. For example, for oats price, I used what green cover would pay for oats in the dirt before it goes into the conditioning process, or even a milling price is what I used on that. You can see generally, and we've been seeing this for close to ten years now, that we can lower our inputs 150 to 250 dollars an acre with this system, which takes a lot of the pressure off on needing to have the revenue high. So for this past year, you can see the net per acre we're quite a bit higher than if we were corn and beans, and this was even conceding that we had lower corn yields than the corn-bean system. Half of our farm is irrigated, which I probably should make that point. So it's 500 acres figuring a corn-bean rotation, half of it irrigated and half of it dryland with our soil types.

25:55 I just threw in some projections for 2024 using 480 dollars for corn. Hopefully we can get that at some point. The price of small grains has come back quite a bit. I think I used four dollars on the oats price here. So irrigated oats was at best a break-even deal this year. I have no intention of taking that out of the system. I almost look at that as being a regenerative part of the system.

26:31 Projections of less revenue for the oats. We're doing some annual grazing, and our costs per acre are still so much lower. You can see we come up with a prediction of a pretty good net. Anybody that's been running budgets on corn and beans this year know that it doesn't look really good. And this is figuring our local land costs. When we compare, I have a lot more details on that if at some point anybody wants to ask me more questions, but for the sake of time I wanted to concentrate on the seed through the years.

27:14 It's been interesting the observations I've seen in the way our system has changed. We always have some research plots on the farm. I like to run micro plots of different oats varieties, sometimes more for observation than even the hard data. What we will do, like on a plot with the oats here, we will go in and hand harvest some replications and actually use digital scales and get some estimates on dry matter and grain yield. We mostly like to do these kinds of things for observation. So since we raise non-GMO beans, I usually have a test plot where I'm comparing them with the most recent traded beans, and then also to observe their disease resistance too.

28:09 After listening to John Kemp last week, it really got me thinking about whether our seed that we're producing is different. And I happened to realize that we had a three-year study on this one field where they were tracking the increase in soil health, and on year two of it they took a sample of the oats we produced off of it and did an analysis of it. So I went and looked that up this week and I compared it to what feed tables.com considers average composition of their oats. And this sample of oats was before it was cleaned, so it would be what would be considered normal feed oats.

29:02 Really thought it was interesting. On a system with very low fertility added, we had protein levels higher than what they considered average. Interesting to see that our phosphorus level was 133% of average. They did grid sampling and GPS coordinated samples of the soil where this oats came off of, and the phosphorus levels in these soils are extremely low—they're single digit—and we still have phosphorus in the oats well above average. You know, I really thought that was interesting. Listening to John last week, he talked about boron. That was one thing we didn't have in this sample. But it is interesting though that the molybdenum was three times average. So the micronutrients that we're looking into, it all starts making you think: is there really a big difference in the seed quality? And the more nutrients we have in the seed, the healthier plant that you will end up getting.

30:22 And then also with the test weight—like the test weight I raised this year was right at 40 pounds. So you have a large, heavy seed—12,000 seeds per pound, where normal oats is 15,000. So it's just an interesting study, you know? Can we make a big difference in our seed quality?

30:50 So what it made me think of is I went and found these pictures back from 2011, when we first started growing a lot more oats for seed. You know, we kind of went through a time period where we went away from oats, and when I was a kid we always had rust in oats. We would windrake—dad bought two swathers—we would windrake thousands of acres of oats for the neighbors. There was a lot of oats in the country and it just seemed there was always rust. And even in 2011, here we're swathing a field, and so the answer to that rust problem is just get your nephew Trevor to do it. So this is a 40-year-old windrower that we're out windrowing oats with, but it just made me start thinking of.

31:46 It's been several years now since our field inspections have showed rust when they inspect it or disease late in the season. The question is is it from the health of the system or is it also from some of the breeding that South Dakota state is doing, getting resistance in.

32:11 There's another observation in our seed, this is a field of seed beans with no fertility, untreated seed, drilled. We have been having problems with damage, could be 240, been getting a lot of drift. Our beans really aren't growing well until we get into August, so we're losing some weed control that way. You can see we have weeds there that we can't control with post-emergent herbicide, but this was a very productive field in spite of what we have there.

32:59 We had a lot of problems with sudden death this year. We had conditions that were conducive to it, and in these drilled beans there was it was really hard to find any signs of it even though it's 7 and a half inches rose irrigated bean. So these here with basically zero inputs were right at 70 bushels an acre at this point and only 3 inches of irrigation water.

33:35 Just what I've been seeing as far as the benefits of an extended rotation. Also some other observations, these two pictures were taken minutes apart a mile apart. Had a really heavy rainfall this past summer, and traditionally the field on the right is planted to seed oats. Traditionally this field 30 years ago would have been overwhelmed with water from the upland like this field on the left a mile away. We have very little runoff from the upland anymore, and the soil quality is so much on this field that you can really see how it shouldered this heavy rain event well.

34:28 This is the same rain event on the slopes. Amazing the difference after years of a soil health system. And then let's go to the dry years. The differences we're seeing. Just some examples of the system that we're raising our seed in. If you go to the soil survey map, this is Thurman sand, it's 70% sand, 15% clay. They rate it like a class 4, class 6 dryland, suggest that you don't dryland farm it, and this is what we've been able to do with it.

35:19 So for that I'd like to have some conversation.

35:33 Well thanks Jeff, boy, I got two pages of notes here, so I'm going to be asking the first questions here. Folks feel free to put your questions in the Q&A box there and we'll get to those as well. But such great information there, Jeff. Thanks for sharing that. First of all, how common is it in your area, you know, northeast Nebraska, different condition environment. But how common is it for other farmers around to have a third of their rotation be in some sort of a cool season small grain? Is that fairly common or not common at all?

36:10 No, it's not common. Maybe there's some thoughts of it. I can drive all the way to Lincoln and not see an oats field. There's starting to be more questions about it now, and obviously when commodities go down people start to ask questions.

36:31 Yeah, and that's what I expected you to say because it's not common almost anywhere, and the annual grazing, you know, not common. So you're doing a lot of uncommon things. But your slides that you had on your economics were just stunning, and I mean we could spend that whole webinar sometime because of your profitability numbers. Less gross income, but so much less expenses, so many fewer inputs. And if I wrote this down right, 47 units of nitrogen for 170 bushel oats, what what.

42:04 Live animals in it. We did experiment a little bit with elevated eggs, biologicals in there also, but for the most part it's been our own compost extracts and that we've been learning to make from our own thermal piles.

42:25 A thermal pile means it heats up, you turn it, it heats up, you turn it, that type of a thing, right? Yeah, and how long would you say that is? Generally it'll take a couple weeks. If you do everything right, in two to three weeks you have everything coming into an equilibrium where the temperature will go back to ambient and you have all your biology in a balance. But at that point the more aging the better because we're trying to get the fungal component up in it.

43:08 It's very interesting to actually see it under the microscope and know that you're doing is there and we are actually seeing those critters in our soil tests, in our soil samples now. I can bring a sample down from a field and we'll see some of them same critters there.

44:32 Jeremy's asking a question about you know have you done any type of mycorrhizal fungal inoculation in any of your seed or your soils or are you just relying on the natural mycorrhiza in your system and then creating the right system for them to grow and expand? We haven't added any. I have no data on it, you know, even if we would, but we haven't added any. As a result of this three-year study they did a really deep analysis on the makeup of the biology in there and we've grown a really good fungal biomass in there. The numbers are starting to look good, which those nutrients have to be coming from something. Obviously we got some good fungal bacteria ratio going on there.

45:31 You're talking about the farms program that you were in because they did a lot fungal to bacterial testing and ratios there. And you know there's lots of good tests out there for some of these different things. I see that Dr. Laura Kavanagh is on the webinar and she's a principal scientist with AAAA and they're going to be coming out with some lower cost DNA testing for soil which I think will be fascinating to be able to get a cheaper and quicker look at what's in your soil based on DNA.

46:14 There's good things out there, there's better things coming, yes, when it comes to being able to test, analyze, and then based on that you need to be able to use that to make decisions on do I need more compost, do I need more extract, I didn't see any mycorrhiza at all, maybe I need to inoculate. But if you don't measure it you don't know, right? And right now we're showing really good improvements in our biology. I can't say that I can really see it on the side by side that I can see it visually yet. But then my question is what do we have going there already as a result of what we've been doing for quite a few years now.

46:58 Typically I think that's true. The biological amendments are going to show the most benefit, the most help on soils that have the least amount of biology in them. Somebody said you know when you put some of these biological amendments into a really healthy soil system it's like turning a bunny rabbit loose in the Amazon jungle. What's the chances of it surviving with all of that other wildlife out there? It's probably not very high because there's so much competition and stuff already out there.

47:35 Getting back to the nutrient content and we talked about low phosphorus in your soil test but yet high phosphorus in your oats. Willy is asking you know when they did that analysis I assume that was just a traditional chemical soil analysis, Mehlich like three extract or—

47:56 Something like that that he's asking, have you done a total nutrient digestion type analysis that would tell you how much total phosphorus you have in your soil, have you done that type of test? No, and that's a really good question. We did not do it on this field. We have done some and they're very interesting so that is on my bucket list that I need to do the total nutrient on this field that shows that low phosphorous rating to see what is actually there but yeah that's a good point.

48:27 I could add to that in that three-year time period these were all GPS coordinate samples Colorado State did this. The phosphorus level went from like a 5.3 to 17 on those on the I think it was six coordinates they had looked at and the even the potassium went up by like 25% and this is with basically no added inputs.

48:58 Yeah so you saw those numbers increase even though you didn't put any synthetic, you put some compost extract but that's not have significant amounts of the minerals, it's the biology that's stimulating the system to release.

49:17 Yeah so Matt is asking, first of all he says thank you very much for sharing your operation, you know that's not everybody's willing to share that level of detail so we do all appreciate that. His question is you said some of your corn was without seed treatment so the corn that did have treatment what kind of treatment was it and why did you not go with all untreated seed? Was there a reason, were you comparing those, what was the thinking there?

49:47 You know the bottom line is I want a variety of hybrids and I just could not, it's just hard to get untreated. I had to specifically ask for this one number untreated and that's as much as I wanted to ask for but we had there was certain numbers I wanted from that I'm used to planting, I just couldn't get them untreated. I really have no fear of going all untreated anymore other than we did see the side by side this year and there was no difference, you know absolutely side by side with insecticide fungicide treated corn and none.

50:29 And was that a full treatment package with the neonicotinoids and the fungicides and the whole works? I believe so it was a package and I'd have to look it up, it's what they advertise as a package. Yeah yeah yeah.

50:49 So yeah and I think that you know I think that's what really good farmers in a regenerative system are seeing is that there is no difference in the performance but there long term there's going to be a negative effect of having those chemicals in the soil so I think that we will see more companies coming out with untreated seed and even there I think there'll be some pressure on these big companies to offer untreated seed and I would encourage everybody to start asking because these guys will listen to the customers but if nobody's asking, if you just sit around the coffee shop or around the soil health conferences in the winter time complaining about not being able to find treated seed but you didn't ask for it well then those big companies aren't getting the message so more people need to say hey I'd like this number but I'd like to get it untreated. Now they may tell you no or it's too late or something like that but then just say well keep me in mind, you know next year what do I need to do to get this untreated? The more people that say that the more that's going to get moved up the food chain in these big companies and it will get listened to eventually, maybe not as quickly as we'd like but I believe it will get listened to.

52:11 Dr. Kavanagh actually posted in the chat here, she said she's excited to bring the new DNA analysis and answer many of the questions we have. We will learn to optimize a microbial ecosystem. The coming years will be exciting so.

52:26 Yeah, what some of that technology hits the market and stuff. Dr. Laura, we may have to have you on a webinar as well to share some of that exciting information with folks. So that is exciting. Jeremy's asking in the three-year study that they did, did they test and tell you what types of fungi were in your soil, were in the soil as far as sapric versus the arbuscular mycorrhiza, or was it just general fungal components without any specific species?

52:58 I don't recall there being any specificity. It was pretty much biomass is what it was. Yeah, and that's where some of the DNA testing coming down the road is going to help us identify that a little bit more, right? Because even under the microscope we're hoping we can identify like the mycorrhiza type, but as of now we can just recognize the healthy-looking fungi, but we're not sure what it is.

53:37 So just a couple of questions to kind of wrap things up here. First of all, and then maybe we should ask this question to Jolene, although I'm sure she's hiding and doesn't want to come on the screen, but how much value do you think there was in having her go through the soil food web school? Is that something you'd recommend? Value in owning a microscope so you can be kind of checking and ground truthing the products that you're either making or using? How would you tell people where the value is in that type of stuff?

54:09 You know, the tremendous value in you need to understand what you're doing in the first place rather than getting something in a jug. And then the power of being actually able to observe it under a microscope, you know, is this what it says we're supposed to have? It changes your whole thought process, even to the point of now we're like, well, why should we put fertility down early when we want to challenge the system to work as it was meant to work? And can I wait, how long can I wait to put any nitrogen fertilizer on at all? And at that point, do I add humic to try to lessen the blow of the fertilizer with it, or will I get to zero? It's all questions.

55:05 Yeah, maybe talk just a little bit. You kind of broach the subject there, but why would you put humic with your nitrogen fertilizer that you're putting out there? You said it kind of softens the blow. Talk just a little bit about the concepts there.

55:20 Well, from what I understand, just having that carbon in there as a recovery food source for the salts that you've just added to the system, you know, which is very antimicrobial, you know, the salt part of the fertilizer. Jimmy Emmons is the one that sent me on this path. He says you really got to consider doing that now, and even possibly on herbicide applications. The soft blow, but it's, I mean, as I understand it, it's because of the carbon source you're adding.

55:58 Yeah, and I think that's really important. And there's a lot of good information out there that you can find people who are doing some of this type of work. But also the fact that you know you're putting 50 pounds or less out there, and that's a big difference between somebody going out there. If you're looking at 180 bushel corn, a lot of University recommendations would be probably 150 to 180, depending on factors there. But it would be three times what you're putting on, probably the recommendation. And so it's really important that some of the toxicity is in the dose, as well as what you're putting out there.

56:42 All good points there. Matt is asking the question. I guess this is to us: have we considered carrying non-treated heritage corn seed? We do have some of that type of stuff specifically for grazing. You know, Jeff, the picture of the Jimmy Red, you know, we've got some things like that. We're not sure that we want to really promote it as—

57:04 A solution to growing grain corn because we know that in some of these heritage or heirloom or open pollinated type varieties you will give up quite a bit of yield potential versus a hybrid. And so I don't know that you give up as much biomass. You know the Jimmy R, that stuff gets 12 feet tall and has a lot of biomass, but it's not going to be a grain yielder like a hybrid, so that's part of the difference there.

57:35 I mentioned this last week, but this will be a six week series—this is week two. The sixth one that we're going to do is going to be a seed corn seed breeder who has a company developing all non-GMO hybrids and he's developing these varieties within a regenerative system and offering all of these as non-treated seeds. So I think people will be really interested in listening to that. We have nothing to do with this company—I'm not trying to promote it. I'm promoting the concept that there are people out there who are doing good breeding work in regenerative systems. It's not just all being done in high fertility, high tillage conventional systems. There's a lot of it being done that way, don't get me wrong, but not everybody is going down that road, so we just wanted to highlight some of that good work as well.

58:30 Our time is coming to an end here, Jeff. What maybe just one last thing there—what suggestions would you have for someone who wants to try to take a step into more of a system like what you have? You know, more diversity, more biologically based, lower inputs. What would be one or two tips or pieces of advice you'd give to somebody wanting to step into this?

58:57 So you need to come up with hopefully something else you can plant besides the corn and beans. You know, we can easily overwhelm the oats market. Wheat would be a possibility. I've been telling people to consider forage right now. If you could actually just put some forage crop in the system and then be able to come back with that multi-species like you said for two months, once you see what that does to your system, you know, then you get excited and you want to get it into their more. First, I was pushing if you could just—if just 20% of your ground could be something different. We've eventually gone to where we're probably well over 30% of our farm is something other than corn and beans. But find the crop that you can get in there to extend your rotation.

59:55 Yeah, I like that. And one thing that you said that I wrote down too that I really liked—that diverse multispecies cover crop, you said it has a large tail, which essentially means you see the benefits of that not just this year but you see it next year and you see it two years down the road. You might even see it three years down the road. Yes, so having that as one year out of three or four in a rotation still makes a tremendous difference.

1:00:26 Yeah, I like that, has a long tail. So, well, thank you so much Jeff. Great conversation, great example of how people can do things differently and do it successfully and do it profitably and not have to be trying to farm half the county to do it. So thank you for sharing that, encouraging all of us to do it. This will be posted to our YouTube channel, so if you'd like to share this with a friend or a neighbor, please do so. It will be out on our YouTube channel relatively soon, and we will be back next week, week next Wednesday. I don't even—I should have had the list. I don't even know who we have next Wednesday. I forgot to look at my list, but we will be back with another one of our great seed growers sharing some of their system as well. So thank you, Jeff. Thank you everybody for joining, and everybody have a great week. Y and Keith—I think we've, Keith, we've got Scott Shimer. Okay, Scott Shimer from Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, so going from northeast Nebraska to eastern Colorado, we're going to make a drastic shift in environments. So it'll be interesting. Some similar principles but very different practices. So thanks, Jonathan. Hope to see everybody back next week. Thank you.