Jimmy Emmons on Regenerative Farming in Western Oklahoma

0:04 All right, should be good to go. We're now streaming on Facebook. So I will go ahead and get us kicked off here. Welcome everybody to season five now of our webinar series. We're just saying that there might be some webinar fatigue but I don't think the desire or the passion for knowledge in the soil health industry has really slowed down or died at all. In fact, I think more people are eager to learn what they can do to improve the profitability of their farm and improve the health of their soil.

0:33 So we did bring in a big gun here for this first one to kick things off. We wanted to find somebody that had experience in the field. This webinar series we've got a lot of really smart individuals, some doctors, all kinds of things, but we wanted somebody that actually had experience and knew what they were doing as well as the knowledge. Jimmy, I don't think you're a PhD but you've definitely got the skill set and the knowledge to do that. If you want, we wanted to start off with somebody that was really got their hands dirty. So we got Jimmy Evans with us this evening.

1:09 For those who are tuned in, if this is your first time, you guys are going to be muted. But if you have any questions or anything you want to put in the chat box, we're going to let Keith and Jimmy kind of have a discussion tonight. This isn't necessarily a presentation, but if you have questions during the interview with Keith and Jimmy, you can type those out in the chat bar or in the Q&A. And we'll go to about 6:15 with the interview portion and then we'll open it up to audience questions, so we'll definitely get to those.

1:38 With that, I will put myself on mute, go to the background, and Keith, do you want to go ahead and introduce our speaker?

1:44 Yeah, thanks Noah, and thanks everyone for joining us. It's a little, it's gonna take us a little bit to get into the rhythm of this again, but I am excited. Like Noah said, to be able to kick this off with my good friend Jimmy Evans. Jimmy, we go back many years. Really, I don't know bro, for I think as long as we've had Green Cover Seed, it feels like that we've known you and that we've worked with you through No-Till on the Plains and through different events.

2:13 So Jimmy is a farmer and rancher from western Oklahoma, and we'll talk a little bit about where he's at and what kind of makes that unique because his ability to make it work where he's at is even more impressive than where a lot of us are at. So like Noah said, we wanted Jimmy on here because he brings really unique perspective because he's been doing these things for a number of years in the cropping side, which is important, in the livestock side, so he's definitely been integrating the livestock.

2:56 But the other thing that I really like with what Jimmy has been doing is that he's very concerned about getting the message out. So he speaks widely across the country, even into other countries, and he's a real public servant at heart as well. He's served on a lot of different commissions and boards and leadership positions within conservation movements. So in my opinion, that gives him additional perspective and experience as he approaches a lot of this because he's seen these concepts and these principles work not just on his own farm, which is important, but he's also seen it work across farms all across the country. And then he's able to bring a lot of that information in and share it.

3:46 So Jimmy, I'm excited to have you here on the webinar. I'm even more excited to be able to call you a friend, to be able to call you a partner in this venture that we call soil health and regenerative ag. And that's kind of how I want to kick this webinar off. You know, regenerative ag is kind of a hot buzz word. We started out kind of no-till and soil health, and now regenerative ag has kind of seems like it's settled in as the term that a lot of people use. We use it here, but I'm not sure that everybody really understands exactly what regenerative ag means and it may mean different things to different people. So I'm curious from your background, your experience, from everything that you're doing, what does regenerative agriculture mean to you? And how are you employing that or how are you practicing that on your farming operation there in western Oklahoma?

4:43 Well, good evening Keith, and thanks for the invitation. Yeah, you know, like you said, when we started 10, 11 years ago, we've done a lot of talking about soil health and cover crops, no-till. And then this term regenerative ag came along, and it really fit. It fits me, because we talk quite a lot about how we degraded the resource.

5:10 The soil, and to regenerate it, to rebuild it, to restore it is really what we're after. And it really fits what we're trying to do is to build the organic matter and the carbon levels back up where it was, hopefully pre-settlement, and get back where it was the dark, rich soil that once was in the prairie.

5:41 We really like that term at Evans Farms because I think it fits, like I said, what we're trying to do. And it is very popular right now, a very big buzz word across the country. I did a podcast the other day and they were googling up the terms that we might name the podcast. Regenerative ag had come up 127,000 times in the last three days on Google.

6:09 People are watching and trying to learn and get that buzz word out. But like I said, I think it really fits what you and I are doing on our own farms and land, and that's trying to rebuild and restore what was once a very productive prairie ecosystem.

6:31 Yeah, and you know our mission statement here at Green Cover, you see it on the little board here behind me, but it's, you know, it's helping people regenerate God's creation for future generations. And that's one of the reasons that you know we feel such a kinship with you because I know that's a big passion of yours as well.

6:50 Jimmy, I remember being at a field day at your place and we were riding on the bus. I can't remember if it was you telling the story or if it was one of the old farmers that were on there, but talk about, you know, when we think about Western Oklahoma in particular, we think about soil that's just red. But I can't remember because you or somebody else, but you heard some of the old-timers talk about when they first started farming that it wasn't red.

7:21 You know, my great-granddad, when he brought granddad to the farm in 1926, talked about the grass being shoulder high, and he was six foot four, down at the farm where you've been with my pivots in the south Canadian River being there. And it was a very dark, rich soil underneath that. And you know, that hadn't been that long ago when you really put it in history perspectives and time frames.

7:52 We had a field day today where we talked about the redness of the soil and really the reason it's red is because we've washed everything else out from it. The iron just will not wash out with the other minerals, and so it stays and gives us that red cast. But we're finding now on our farm we've been able to reload, regenerate that, and so they've actually reclassified some of our soils in them first projects because of the amount of carbon that we've been able to put back in to change the darkening of the soil.

8:34 I truly believe we're going to get back before we were. It's a slow uphill battle and mother nature can help you or it can tell you to wait a little bit due to rains. When we do have them good years, we can make some really good gains. But then in drought years it's slower; you kind of erode a little of that away. But that's kind of the ebb and flow, and I believe that's the way God created it, to not always be the Garden of Eden. You gotta have some trials and tribulations as you go through to make you stronger. And so I believe we're on the right course.

9:14 Yeah, and I don't want to gloss over something that you said there because it's a really big deal, in the fact that the government has come out and reclassified your soil. So not only did you just increase the soil organic matter, but to such an extent that when they look in their soil survey book and then they look at your soil it's like this isn't the same thing that it was. You know, when did they do that? In the 40s or 50s or whenever they did that, 30s? And Dave Brandt, you know, has done similar things. They've had to come out and just physically classify the soil because it is just not the same classification anymore, and that's such a big deal because not only has the color changed but the productivity has changed as well. And you know, in today's farming economy of tight margins and

10:11 Higher inputs and all of that, the additional levels of productivity is just really going to pay big dividends for you.

10:20 Well yeah, it's allowed us to really cut back on our commercial fertilizer that we put on and our chemicals and weed control. Probably if I've added that all up with my fuel bill, probably around 30 to 40,000 a year that we've cut out that we used to spend annually. And really for me Keith, the sweetness of that itself is that Dave Brandt is the guy that made the light go on for me 11 years ago as I heard him speak, and I was like man I want to be Dave Brandt, you know, and I want to do that to my soil.

11:06 It really shocked me this past fall when the NRCS soil scientists and the commissioned soil scientists said, you know, over the past 10 years you've changed just so much that we can now reclassify that. It's like, wait a minute, what did you say? And it really is a very fulfilling moment for us on the farm that we have accomplished a small milestone. We're not near Dave's level, do not get me wrong, but we have been recognized that we can do that in a pretty environment, a tough environment.

11:50 Some of the ways that you've gotten there Jimmy is, you know, I think your path to where you're at is somewhat similar to ours. You know, we all kind of came out of more of a conventional mindset, you know, maybe not full-blown tillage but certainly you know tillage is part of the operation, and then you know, like us, you switch to no-till initially because that just made a lot of sense. You know, we studied under Dwayne Beck, if you will, and just learned all those no-till concepts, and then the cover crops started coming in and yeah that made sense to add that in there too. And then I would say kind of the next stage of where we're at, and I know where you're at as well, is starting to bring in more of the biology, whether it's biological additives or more importantly just farming in such a way that increases the biology that we already have there. Talk a little bit about your progression of how you've gone through those different steps, and then maybe let's have a little bit of a conversation about how much faster can people get there today if they employ the whole system at once instead of kind of piecemeal like the steps that you and I have gone through.

13:01 Yeah, and the great thing what we can do today is we have such avenues like right now that we can learn from through webinars and conferences and stuff that are predominant across the country and across the globe, and probably work that many you know 10, 15 years ago, and especially not at the level. So you know, we started no-till in 1995, and we had a lot to learn. And once again that spot between my two years was pretty hard to change, and especially for my dad, my mother, it was extremely hard because it just seemed all wrong, you know, what you were taught growing up. But you know I liked the concept, I thought it would work. And we really struggled five, six years in because we were still on the old mindset that you know residue was not our friend. We still wanted to get rid of that for some reason.

14:06 And then we started seeing things decline, and now I know what was going on. I wasn't feeding it enough, I wasn't keeping a living root growing as long as I could, and you know all the principles. But once that light came on with Dave and I was all in, and we started to cover crops and we started seeing benefits right away. And we were tracking very hard because once again I had to be convinced myself that they weren't going to use too much water in our arid environment, you know, that everybody was telling us, you know, you can't do that, that's double cropping. We can't double crop western Oklahoma. We barely got enough water to raise one, and that's all true. Now that I know that our infiltration rates were destroyed, even though we were getting enough water, we weren't retaining enough water. And once we started with the cover crops, that started rebuilding and we started retaining more, and then that allows you to grow a cover crop that allows you to do some limited double cropping systems when there is extra moisture.

15:19 And so you know our new model now is we want every raindrop where it falls, and when it rains I like to say we got it all.

15:31 Extreme weather and we may have one of them tonight. We're under the gun here tonight for severe storms and heavy rainfall. You know, I'm not saying we can take in a flood, but we can take in six to seven inches an hour, pretty quick. So we can take a pretty heavy moderate thunderstorm and take it all in, and if that persists we may shed off some, but we're going to retain the most of it, and I think that's really key to use that down the road.

16:07 So the whole reclassification of the soil just shows that our water infiltration rates have really gone up from a half inch an hour. Like I said, we've measured anywhere from three to nine, ten inches an hour, so we kind of settle with an average about six to seven, eight, somewhere in there, depends on the soil type where you're at. What a significant change in ten years to do that.

16:35 And like you said, we started out no-till in '95. We went to cover crops in 2010. Then my soil scientist, he told the story today, he called me every day for 20 days straight, trying to convince me to go into rotational grazing, the cover crops, and on the 21st day I agreed, and we went into that. And that's when I saw my soil changed the most, the quickest. And that kind of completed the ring of the circles, what I like to say.

17:13 And yes, if I could have started in '95 just whole hog all the way in with no-till, cover crops, and animals, and all that diversity and rotation, there's no telling. I may be giving Dave, you know, a run for his money down the stretch here, but we didn't. And you know, we learned a lot as we went.

17:40 You can't discount that. I told them today again that you learn as you go from failures. You got to have some failures, and trust me, we've had plenty, just like everybody else. And I'm not afraid to admit that I do some stupid things once in a while and try something that this flat doesn't work, but normally I learned something from that that really helps me try to do something next. So it's been a fun deal, and side by side comparisons in the field really helps you learn.

18:15 I love the saying, and I had somebody in California tell me this once too. Somebody asked how much rain did you get? The only answer that we should ever give is all of it. And you know, if we can't say all of it, then it doesn't really matter how much you got. It's how much you get in. Now, again, I've been out to your farm there in Leedy, you know, Dewey County. It's a tough environment. You know, nobody is going to deny that.

18:45 And even here where we're at in south central Nebraska, people still don't want to plant a cover crop because of the moisture that it's going to use. And you know, we've done a number of moisture experiments to have to prove it to ourselves, and I know that you did too. Share with the group a little bit about what you did to prove to yourself that the moisture usage was maybe not as big of a concern as what you had initially thought.

19:21 So we harvested, and we decided that we wanted to measure what a cover crop would use. So we put moisture probes, temperature probes in, but we also went and made a plot where we took all the residue off and kept it bare just like the neighbors, just like I would have done growing up—no residue, no weeds, no living roots. And so we put a probe in, a temperature probe, and a moisture probe there, and then one in the cover crops.

19:53 And what we really found was that we're actually evaporating more with that bare soil in our arid environment than a cover crop could ever use. And as we took in probes all fall going into wheat planting, we showed that we had a significant increase of available water in the profile where the cover crop was, and we had none in that square. It was like a real eye-opener to us, and I knew I was on the right path.

20:29 So we started learning in our mind what the systems approach would do, and how the plants shaded, and how that mix of different things worked in synergy together, and that the biology started coming.

20:49 Back alive and we thought man we're really on to something. Then the big breakthrough came through the next spring we went ahead. We terminated that and this was in 2011. Mind you we had 9.3 inches of moisture in 11 and then 12 we had 7.2, and then in 14 we had 25.3 the month of May. And that's the reason I tell everybody when they asked me what kind of rainfall area you live in I said it's a 22-inch rainfall give or take 22 inches, and it's the truth.

21:30 But what we really found the next spring when the noble research Jim Johnson came out to the farm, it's kind of like you do once you all come by to visit we went up there and you could see that square still in the wheat and the wheat wasn't as good in that square that was bare that year, and the wheat around it was better. Now once again we had limited rainfall so it wasn't it wasn't 100 bushel a week, you know 25 bush a week was all that was there.

22:01 But Jim got a probe out of soil probe and went to probing around and he hit a hard layer in that plot that was bare and he said man you've got a restriction down there. Well when he really pulled it out it was dry dirt at 16 inches, and I said well Jimmy you know it just hadn't rained that much. Well when he moved outside that square in where the cover crops was he could push it all the way in and it was 33 and a half inches to a dry layer there, and and that sealed the deal is what I tell everybody.

22:37 We knew right then that that crew beyond the shadow of doubt for me that we had to keep it covered and keep that principle in. Then the next step was the following year we done the same thing but we grazed that cover crop instead of terminating it, and we didn't wind up with quite as much moisture but we understood because we grazed it longer and it went to a more reproductive mode that we used a little bit more water.

23:12 But then the following February when we measured once we'd caught a little rain and a little snow through the winter we were actually water ahead in them plots versus the bare spot and once again our water infiltration was getting better our aggregation was growing, and that really sealed the deal that yeah we now we understand if we graze it we're going to use some water but we're still improving the soil at a more rapid pace, and we're actually going to be water ahead down the stretch when the crop really needs it to finish and make grain.

23:49 We had the water available but once again it God does have to provide the rain in that period or if it never rains it's really never going to matter. But it always seems to rain and we need to catch all of it. Yeah I really do.

24:06 Yeah that's for sure and I think what you were seeing and what you were measuring is similar to what we saw and what we measured here. I know I've seen slides from Dwayne Back that he's shown very similar things in South Dakota. Jay Fur you know has almost exactly the same type of results from some of the North Dakota guys up there. You know that the moisture that a cover crop uses is generally almost all offset and sometimes even gain back more because of less evaporation and better infiltration.

24:42 And so you know moisture certainly is going to be a limiting factor but it's a lot of times not as limiting. It doesn't have to be as limiting as what we think it is but sometimes we make it more limiting through tillage or through the removal of residue, and we saw the same thing you know just because there's nothing growing out there does not mean that that soil, that piece of ground is not losing moisture through that evaporation process.

25:14 Yeah and another thing that I said in a field day and we're in southern Oklahoma today, and we were out in a pasture and had a lot of ragweeds and mare's tails sticking up and they were talking about the canopy and it really wasn't that bad, and they were talking about maybe mowing it up you know above the grass just to knock them weeds off. And I said where I come from that's a perfect snow catch, and from really my place clear up to in the connect Canada is we all think about snow catch and we want once again every drop. And so you know even them covers in that wheat stubble in that wheat that we're growing really helps us catch that snow in the wintertime so you know that's we we want that moisture we need it and this men provide we just got to be a good steward and try to keep it.

26:14 Where it falls, yeah, especially when your neighbors are kind enough to do all that tillage and then just give you all their snow for free if you could catch it. Yeah, and so that's a big deal. You know, I've had to go dig my neighbors out because their fields block the roads, and they talk about how it didn't snow quite as much or block-wise bad over my place. I said, 'No, no, it didn't.' [Laughter] It stayed right where it needed to be.

26:47 Because of what you saw with the moisture and, you know, that it was working differently than what we maybe inherently think coming from that conventional mindset. Talk a little bit about some of the other things then that you were able to build on that, like some of the growing grains organ with some companion crops and maybe even some of the double cropping stuff that you've done, which is completely unheard of in your area.

27:14 Yeah, you know, once you start down this path and you see something work, then you want to do more. And it's kind of like building a race car. Once you win your first race, you want to build it a little better, a little faster. And so then we started talking about companion cropping. You know, if I'm going to travel America and travel the world and talk about this, you've got to practice what you preach. And I'm no false prophet. I would really try to practice what I preach. So, okay, grain sorghum. If we're going to raise grain sorghum, this terrible plague of sugar cane aphids was really hurting the grain sorghum in our area and clear up, you know, even north of me. So we come up with this idea with you and your team of how we put some plants in that and using different colored flowers and try to attract the beneficials. And so we've done that, and lo and behold, we didn't have to spray. And we see that every year we might have a few for a little bit, then we have the predators come in and just really take care of them. And so it was a real eye opener. Once again, we're saving money because the seed never cost as much as one chemical pass cost, especially in that where we're just using five or six companions with the grain sorghum. It's a pretty cheap mix to put in. And we really saw some great benefits from that. We continued to do that even this year. And I also just right south of my grain sorghum, this time I had a couple of BMRs planted with some flax and some buckwheat in there as well for hay. And when I went to swath that, the blister beetles were just by the billions in there. And so I stopped and got out, and the sugar cane aphids had come in and was in that BMR's that we foraged that we had. And so I just let them work a couple of days, and they eliminated the problem and they moved on. I don't know where the beetles went, but they moved on, and we were able to cut and put that hay up.

29:51 So mother nature has this really good system. If we don't mess with it a little bit, just give her a little bit of time. And then also, this year we had some sesame growing, and these were double crop as well as that grain sorghum. So the grain sorghum was behind barley, and the sesame was behind wheat. And so we were late planting that. This year was another challenging year, but we got a good stand. Excellent stand with sesame. It was growing real good. And the company I was growing for, Cesco, called me and said, 'Man, we're having a bad infestation of worms coming in, and you really need to be watching.' And I told them, I said, 'Well, I put some humates over the top and some a product called Hyper Grow as well as a pretty good shot of molasses the other day, and I think we're good.' And he just kind of laughed at me, and he said, 'Well, I'll be out and check for worms.' And you know, one week went by, two weeks went by. Every week he would come. He's like, 'Man, the worms just aren't coming,' and it's like, 'Yeah, I know that our Brix levels are staying between 12, 13, 14 during the day, and I think that's taking care of them because they just can't digest the sugars.' And he looked at me and he said, 'Jimmy, do you really think that's helping?' And I said, 'Well, really, did you? How many worms did you find?' And he said, 'Well, none,' and I said, 'Well, then do you really have to ask me if this is working? I really truly believe that that's a good deterrent.' And we never did have to spray, and we're going to harvest a really good crop.

31:41 Assessment for the year here. How many visits did he have to make to your field before he finally stopped asking you if you really thought that was making a difference? He came six weeks pretty religiously, and he's doing his job for the company because they were having worm issues, and so now they're really interested in looking at that and seeing, you know, maybe doing some more trials, and I thought I'd be sure happy to help with that.

32:13 But once again, it's that holistic total ecosystem circle that if you allow it and you put the diversity in, and also in that sesame we've got sweet clover growing as a relay. So we planted that together at the same time, and we'll harvest that sesame here in the next few weeks, and in that clover over winter, then hopefully we'll have a harvest clover seed next year during harvest period, so to do one planting and have two crops in a relay.

32:57 So you know, not only we've been doing companions, we're trying this new relay thing, and you know we've got a watch in western Oklahoma where we're at the 20-inch rainfall. How much we can push the system. But once again, if you get it all, 20 inches is enough to do some of this, and if you really put it in perspective and you understand that ten years ago we were just taking a half-inch water infiltration rate, so if we got three or four inches, you know, we really only got three and a half inches.

33:35 And so you know, if you can really catch it all, your opportunities are so much greater to work with, and I think that's an obstacle in our own minds out there, to understand how the system works and how important water infiltration, water evaporation, transpiration, and all that works together, and how the synergy of growing multiple things at one time really benefits the system.

34:08 Yeah, and you were speaking of the whole moisture thing, we were having a conversation the other day that I found completely fascinating as well, and I wanted you to share that. When you were out digging in your fields and you noticed there was more moisture, you know, where you had these really biologically active soils, just tell people a little bit about what you were seeing there, and that you really didn't understand what was happening until you brought this up to Dr. Chris Nichols.

34:39 Yeah, you know, in our moisture probes, it was myself and Russell Hedrick in North Carolina all were talking at a conference one day about, you know, I've been noticing a little uptick in our moisture here in the spring and it's not raining, and it's not coming from below because we got 40-inch probes in, and it's not a lot of moisture, don't get me wrong, now it's a few hundredths, a little bit, but it is enough to measure, and we just couldn't come up with any strategy or ideas what it was, and just so happened Dr. Chris Nichols came by and sat down with us and was visiting, and we threw that out and said, I guess you probably know what's happening, and she looked at it and said, actually I do.

35:28 He said, you know, what do you respire out your mouth the most? And all of us said, you know, CO2, and she said, no, it's water vapor. And so the more active your system is, once again, they're just like us, they breathe in oxygen, they exhale CO2 and water vapor, so the more of them that are working for you down there, the more that they're exhaling, and of course, the more water they had work in, the more of them that can work, the more active the system gets to going.

36:07 And so you can really see that. And then this summer I had the distinct privilege to be back in North Dakota with J Few at Monopoly Farm and do a conference with them, and Jay was putting some biologicals in furrow on the seed, and then in furrow and on the seed, and he actually had checked areas just like we all do beside it, and you could push a shovel in in the check area right by the corn plant, maybe four inches where it was seed applied, maybe six, seven inches, and then where he had in-furrow about a gallon, gallon and a half of that worm cast plus on the seed, you could almost push a sharpshooter completely, and that was just with one hand, no feet, and it just shows the biological.

42:12 To a producer to do it. I really truly believe Keith, you know if you really look at the numbers and I know you look at the cover crop seed business numbers and we've grown over the past year since you started, you and Ryan there. But when you really look at the big percentage numbers, we're not as far as adoption across the country near where we need to be in no-till or covers or the systems approach.

42:40 So I really truly believe if we get this built and get it funded and let USDA work the way it should, I think the next big percentage is there and available for us to get and it will help people because quite truthfully in these really tough economic times, it's hard to cash flow operations anyhow and lending institutions and all are watching very carefully.

43:10 But you know if you could tell them I could collect a hundred dollars an acre here to do this, I think the lending institutions will be behind it as well and I really think that's another step that we need to for them to understand the benefits of a complete systems approach to cropping and grazing across America. So I'm really excited about that. We're going to talk a lot about that at your conference in Iola this December as well.

43:41 So I'm excited about that. There's lots of support, a lot of producers that's on the board. I'm on the steering committee for that ride as well and so lots of organizations across the country are joining as well.

43:57 Yeah and I know that you and other members of the steering committee are going to be out promoting this, helping answer questions. I think Noah's got a slide that he'll pull up here in just a second kind of showing people where you'll be if they want to visit more with you about this.

44:13 One comment that I want to make on this, this program, what excites me so much, you know, carbon sequestration is kind of the sexy term right now. Everybody seems like everybody's coming out their own carbon program and there's probably going to be some good ones. I just don't know where they all land yet but there's so many more benefits to the system than just carbon and so what I really like about what you guys are doing is that you're not just getting fixated on carbon is the only benefit that comes from this. You're looking at it more from a whole systems approach and that to me that's exciting because there's so much more benefit than carbon and to not only be able to reward the producer for that but to let the consumer know, let the general public know that hey, these practices are really helping my water, they're really helping my air quality. There's just so many other benefits and so I really appreciate that bigger picture approach to what you guys are doing.

45:13 Noah, do you have, you want to pull up that slide there showing people where Jimmy's going to be at here to be talking more about this program?

45:24 And while I do that here, Jimmy, if you want to kind of go over where you'll be, I am going to open it up to questions here so if you guys have anything feel free to type that out in the chat bar or in the Q&A and Jimmy can get to those in a second.

45:45 Yeah, we'll be traveling a lot for the next several months. I'm going to Greeley, Colorado next week at the Greeley Symposium there, the West Greeley Conservation District for a couple of days. I'm really excited about that. I'm going to be going to Iowa as well, Green Cover. I don't see that all in front of me because I'm reading that off.

46:12 Well, I can say Jimmy, is it sure good that you've got understanding and a hard-working wife and a great hand and Carson there because I don't know that you're ever home to hard to do any work, are you?

46:24 Well, and they say I'm not there to mess things up either. I am very blessed to be traveling a lot this year. I know I'm going to be in Kentucky at the National No-Till as well. I'm going to be in Delaware, I'm going to be in Utah, we'll be in Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, and lots of other places as well. Booked another deal in Missouri today following No Till on the Plains in January. So lots of travel, lots of conferences and you know, the thing that I really enjoy most—I know you do as well, Keith—is I typically learn a lot more than you know people think I go to teach and share and show people what we've done, but I always bring home more. I'm always blessed more than I think I share.

47:27 It's really rewarding. I mean lots of people in arid environments too. I got people I worked with in six inch rainfall and 60 inch rainfall, and it works everywhere. Just like you and I were talking earlier, it's just how you apply those principles in their local environments.

47:49 Right before we get to questions here, Jimmy was mentioning he's going to be at our conference we're putting on in Iola at our Iowa facility down there in southeast Kansas. That's going to be the middle of December, I think it's December 15th and 16th. Jimmy is going to be one of our keynote speakers, so he'll be sharing more of his story and his experiences with his regenerative ag journey as well as he'll be there representing that This Right program. So if you can come to this, it's going to be a great time. We'll be getting more information out to everybody about that here soon. That's going to be the middle of December. We're doing it the day after rifle hunting season for deer ends in Kansas because we don't want to try to compete against the deer stand. The next day then you just come on over and learn about soil health down there in southeast Kansas.

48:46 Noah, do you want to go ahead and go to some questions here? Yep, let me get out of sharing my screen. We actually could never see the screen being shared. Well, that would have been good to know. I thought you knew that. No, I had it on the same screen I did when we practiced. We saw your beautiful smiling picture.

49:10 All right, well we're going to start off. Edward asked about the reclassification of your soil. He's wondering what did it start out as and what did it end up being classified as? Are you just referring to the organic carbon or what was that? And what was the economic impact of your soils changing?

49:28 Our soils in the south Canadian River area is a very young soil. Our state soil scientist Steve Ospal talked about that today: 500 years or younger, which for a soil is very, very young. And normally in those flood plain areas where the new soils are, they're very low in organic matter, which ours was originally when they classified it. So when you say low, you're talking less than one percent probably, aren't you? Yes, so we had spots in the real sandy that was three tenths, four tenths of a percent. So very, very low. Most of all that that was three or four tenths now is one to 1.2, 1.3 is kind of what we measured the other day. The rest of the field now is in the two and a half to three. We got a few threes in there, which is very exciting because that kind of gets us back to getting close to maybe where we were pre-settlement. Most western Oklahoma's, they think around three percent. That was in—I should look that up, I hate to call the soil classification out—but I won't say it was a used Flu Vent. That was the term. So it's very light color, and now it's turned into a Malic Haptic Oil, which is very dark. And even the new soil scientists that came this summer with Steve out there didn't think that it could be changed that well. And when they looked at it, and I want to say the color number was 24, and it only had to be a 22 to be in that classification, so we're actually a little darker than we thought.

51:34 If you'll send me an email or something, I could get Edward more details and specifics and the right correct terminology on that. And what does that mean in dollars to us on Emin's farms? Well, as we get that organic matter to grow, we know we got more water holding capacity, our aggregation is better, but we also have more nutrients. For every one percent that we can grow, we have more phosphorus in that that's readily available for us to take up. So we don't have to spend that money to get that. So the benefits really come, and that's my deal with the carbon market. So it's like you said, Keith, there are really lots of talk about that, but we can see benefits from that carbon ourselves in savings on our inputs and grow better crops with less money. So we're actually done seeing that. I'm in the carbon market business right now.

52:44 And but I'm collecting it in grain and beef. It's instead somebody sending me a check and there's nothing wrong with if somebody wants to sign up for a carbon and the right project will allow that to be stacked so you can do that as well. So that's kind of where we're at. Like I said, if you need more specifics, send me an email and I'll get them to you.

53:09 While you brought up the right project, Ron asks, is that available for us up here in northwestern Ohio? Well, it will be everywhere once we get it in. It is not a program yet. We're in the building stages of that and you can go to the website. We're on Twitter, on Facebook as well and start looking in that and like I said, we'll feature that at Iowa several conferences. I know we're going to the National Grazing Lands Coalition and we're going to Commodity Classic.

53:49 And so what we're doing right now is getting the practices in place that shows the benefits of building the program and then we'll go seek funding from Congress to either put it in the Farm Bill or a standalone funding source to do that. We've proposed a hundred farmers pilot project to show that it really works and we're hoping to get that up here in the next few months as a pilot, but then it won't restrict you to acres or producers once we get it fully funded.

54:29 Randy was asking about the clover that you planted. Do you remember what rate you planted that out? I want to say that was about six to eight pounds in there as well. The green cover seed could look that up but I think that's what we talked about in that five to six, seven pounds per acre. That's a sweet clover as well and I was surprised. I didn't think we had very much but it's really come on now as the camp is opening up, as the sesame's finishing and so I think we got plenty to grow a crop. We'll just see if Mother Nature allows us to do that.

55:18 And Jimmy, you talked a little bit about how there's significant different clover growth where the sesame was pretty good versus where it was pretty thin and you know, that may cause some issues down the road but it kind of shows you the resiliency that some of these things. You know, they're feeling the niche when your cash crop isn't growing right but yet it's not going to be over competitive when it does grow well.

55:44 Yeah, it stayed in the canopy like it was supposed to. It won't interfere with us harvesting at all where we saw the sprayer run to put the Humx and the molasses on it really opened the canopy up right there and that clover really took off. It is really showing what it can do. So I know it's there. It will come on when we need it and that's the thing about companions and relays. I tell everybody a companion is much like marriage. You know, you both can't dominate because you will be fighting and fighting and fighting. You've got to compliment one another and a companion is just to complement the really cash crop that you're growing and to help it foster it along and so I really like that term companion.

56:39 Okay, Willie asks, in your experience does it take longer to improve water infiltration in the typical Nebraska clay soil compared to a more balanced loamy soil under proper regenerative ag systems? You know, where we really see soil that's not as degraded, we see a quicker turnaround. We have some really in Keystone on my place where I live, really upland that was farmed to death with cotton and heavy tillage. It's a slower process in that heavily degraded area that really iron-rich red soil and so it's not going to turn around as quick but we're seeing significant change, you know, increasing all that, just not as much as in that river bottom. And I've got some bottomland south of my house that Keith's been on as well that has really turned around really quick and so the better the soil, the more activity that you started with, the family was there, you just had to foster it to grow and then where you don't have anything that's virtually almost a totally dead soil, it takes three to five years to really start seeing significant changes but we are at over one to one and a half percent there at my farm at the house now and for western Oklahoma, that's pretty.

58:18 And one other thing to consider: when you started rotationally grazing your animals, you saw that soil improve that much quicker. You might consider those really degraded, almost dead soils like what you talked about. You may need to just throw more tools at it, including some biological amendments, including growing cover crops for a couple years and grazing them to get your income instead of trying to grow a cash crop, which likely is going to be marginal at best in those soils. That might be a good one to consider, going to a livestock-based income stream for a year or two to really turn that around.

58:58 We do apply biostimulants on our crops. We really like the Hyper Growing, the Soil Stem, and everything from Elevated Ag has really helped us along, and I think it will speed that process up because it facilitates the family to grow and foster quicker. We've really liked that. We don't mind spending a little bit of money on that to feed that biology to get it to grow and get things turned around a little quicker. We all want to get there quicker. A living root and animals can do it. It's just going to take a little bit longer.

59:44 Keith, there's a question here talking about what kind of forbs you can plant to pull up some subsoil phosphorus. In regards to the cost of a lot of these inputs, how can we use cover crops to kind of alleviate that cost of synthetics? I was just starting to type a response, but it's going to be easier just to talk about it. Ken, there's a lot of different things you can use. The best one for freeing up phosphorus in the soil is going to be buckwheat. Buckwheat's roots have a very strong acid that it creates that can convert the inorganic phosphorus that's in all of our soils to a plant-available form. Buckwheat can get the phosphorus in your soil that your other crops are not going to touch. And then when that buckwheat dies and it decomposes, that phosphorus that's now in the buckwheat plant will cycle and become available for the next crop.

1:00:36 It's not really a deep-rooted form. It's a very fast-growing plant. You only need about six weeks to grow almost a complete full crop of buckwheat. So if you've got a place in your rotation where you can slip that in, buckwheat tolerates heat really well. It does not tolerate cold weather. So if you have a crop of wheat that you harvest and you can come in with a high rate of buckwheat as part of your cover crop, it will really help free up some phosphorus for that next following crop.

1:01:06 Buckwheat was one of the things that Jimmy used in his companions with that grain sorghum, partially for the phosphorus-solubilizing activity, but mainly because it starts blooming in 30 days and you can get a tremendous amount of insect attraction too. We like buckwheat in lots of our cover crop mixes, and those are just two of the reasons why. So buckwheat would be one of the things that I'd be looking at trying to get out there if you feel like your soils are pretty low in phosphorus and you're not willing to spend the thousand dollars a ton to put phosphorus out there, which most of us are not right now. It's really expensive, so that'd be the first one I'd look at.

1:01:49 I don't have any other questions here. We're over 6:30, so I'll let you wrap up. Jimmy, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your experience and knowledge. It's highly valued. We did record this. We'll get it posted on YouTube here later this week. So if you guys are watching and either didn't take notes and you want to re-watch this or share with some friends, we'll get this posted later this week.

1:02:14 Next week we have Dr. Rick and Liz Haney that are going to be on with us. They're going to be talking about their regenerative story, what they see as far as not just soil testing. We're going to talk a little bit about that with Tahini test, but we also wanted to get their input on what they see regenerative agriculture looking like in the future. We'll have them for next week. If you guys signed up for this one, we're going to automatically register you for that next week, so you don't have to worry about that. We look forward to seeing you guys next week, same time at 5:30.

1:02:43 Jimmy, do you have any final words of wisdom for us? You know, I do. It's long live the soil—trademarked, right? You bet it's trademarked. And I mean it, because we've got to have it and we need to protect it. God gave us this great resource to live on and to foster it, and we're here to take care of it. So long live it.

1:03:10 All right, Keith, thank you. You guys have a great rest of your evening, and we'll see you all next week. Thanks everybody.