Reading Your Soil: What Farmers Around the World Are Learning

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top farmers and experts in the regenerative agriculture movement. Join us as we learn how to regenerate God's creation for future generations together.

0:14 Have you ever looked at the world and thought, 'Man, that's a really big place, and I wonder what else is going on out there.' Well, I know I have, and I've traveled some, but not as much as I'd like to. But our guest today, Nicole Masters has traveled extensively and we are going to learn a little bit about her perspectives on what is going on around the world when it comes to soil, soil health and farmers.

0:37 So Nicole, welcome to the Green Cover podcast. Thanks for having me, Keith. Yeah, excited to have this conversation. Yeah, we we're very excited about it as well. And we're going to be talking also about Nicole is going to be coming to Blade, Nebraska on June 3rd and 4th. We're going to be doing what we call a Nexus in the field event. So, we'll be talking more about that towards the end of the show, but she's going to be bringing all that experience right here to Nebraska, and you're all invited to come and be part of that.

1:04 So, Nicole, first of all, you know, I love the fact that you've traveled all across the country, you've taught all across the country, you've worked with farmers and consultants all around the world. Give us just a little bit of your perspective on how farmers are the same maybe how things are different how you know some similarities that you see with soils as you travel the globe.

1:30 It's such a great question and what's fascinating to me is everywhere you go people farmers ranchers think that where they are ranching or farming is the hardest place. You know, we've got these challenges. No one else has them. And what's really interesting is yes, everybody has really unique challenges. You know, some places are too wet, some maybe are too dry. I think what we're seeing arising is the variability in climate. So, everybody talks about, hey, it didn't used to be like this and you know, these seasons are getting shorter or drier or whatever that is. But I think it just points to how hard and challenging farming and ranching really is. I think it doesn't really matter where we are in the world. No one has it easy. But I definitely think that there are places where people have extraordinary challenges and have managed to innovate through that. And that's what gets me really excited is finding the people that have innovated through incredible challenge.

2:33 Yeah. And and the other thing is, you know, in the areas where farming, you know, might might be considered easy.

2:39 Because of good climate, good weather, good rainfall, it's so expensive. The land is so expensive, the competition is so fierce that their challenges then become all economic. And that's what a lot of other people don't realize either is that in these areas where they get better rainfall or have better conditions, the economic pressure is immense.

3:00 Yeah, I was reflecting the other day how much I appreciate being in Montana where we don't have the disease pressures that we don't have the same extent as you do in really humid wet climates. So it's like, yeah, you've got more rainfall but often what we can see too is they have lower bricks, they have lower quality in that. So you can end up just having more biomass but it doesn't mean it's necessarily better.

3:27 You know, you talk to ranchers out here who know their animals perform better when they're on the dry land, when they're getting that more concentrated nutrition. So I think there's so much nuance to it.

3:36 Yeah, there is. And we have that conversation from time to time with people who are interested in growing seed for green cover, and they're in a 50-inch rainfall environment. It's like, well, yeah, for sure you could grow it, but I don't know how good the quality will be. And we kind of go through a lot of those same things. So yeah, every place has its unique challenges.

4:00 Do you see soils being degraded kind of across the globe wherever you go?

4:03 Sadly, absolutely. You know, people will talk about how here we have these pristine soils and I'm like, 'Oh, I can't wait to see this.' And you go out and you're like, 'So what do you mean by pristine?' And then you go back through the history and go well, actually there might have been 10,000 head of livestock on this operation and they left them on when it was really dry and everything blew away.

4:32 You know, I've got some producers I work with that are under buried topsoil from the 1930s. You can still see the topsoil like two, three feet down and then this blow dirt on top. I think we forget. And I found this really amazing drawing of Fort Benton, I think, somewhere around Montana. And they had done this drawing of the fort. It was beautiful. But what they also included all around it were these massive erosion gullies.

5:05 And I pointed it out to the rancher. I'm like, 'Well, check out this picture.' You know, like you go out there now and you wouldn't even know that there'd been these erosion gullies because it's all eroded. And that description of the Europeans moving into these areas as being described as the overgravers. You know, they came in and that land just washed away. And we see the same.

5:26 Thing in Australia. Like where are our written records or memories of what landscape used to look like? And it's unfortunate. You saw the dust storms that are happening this year. I mean, and the dust storms maybe four years ago where you could see on satellite the dust storm went from Alberta to Texas like and the same in Australia just these phenomenal dust storms and I think in the last 10 years 254 people have died in car accidents due to dust storms and so I'm like where are we going to start really thinking that these issues that we're seeing on our landscape are not just they don't stop at the farm gate. This is way beyond your boundary in terms of what are the implications of how I'm managing land and how does that affect people downstream or downwind.

6:17 Yeah. And that's a great point. You know, as farmers, as producers, you know, we have that responsibility for our own operation, but it's bigger than that. Yeah. We do have a responsibility to the larger society as well. And you're right, those pictures are just heartbreaking. Yeah. There's just not too far from us down in Kansas this spring, you know, seven or eight other more people, you know, died in one of those big traffic pileups because of dust and dirt. So, yeah, we definitely have a lot of work to do. Now, you've been doing some really good work. Tell us a little bit about your create program that you have and how you're training kind of the next generation of agroecologist I think. Tell us a little bit about that program.

7:08 Create is our certified agroecological training so it's for people that are ready to professionalize their knowledge and some of you listening to this will be like you know I've been farming in this way for 20 years. We are getting these extraordinary outcomes and I'm ready to now teach others or I'm ready to walk alongside them. You know, we don't see ourselves as experts or consultants and I think it's because we I think for regeneration and where we're heading, it's a different model in terms of I'm not here to tell you what to do and give you this prescription because actually what we found is that doesn't actually work. It's never really worked there's always these unintended consequences. It's really how do we work alongside you to develop your ability to see the landscape, to see soil, to observe plants and animals so that you can make decisions for yourself on the fly? Because most of the time, you know, 99.9% of the time, you don't have a coach or a consultant or an expert on your land. You're having to work those answers out for yourself. And so we're training. I think we're up to 15 different countries now have attended.

8:16 We're up to our fifth. We're just about to announce it actually on the 1st of May, the next round of applications for create for people that really want to make a difference in their communities and really want to develop this into a career. So what we found is people that leave—95% of people that leave create either rewrite their job description, they get head-hunted or they start their own business. So we want to see people step into this as a vocation. This is the biggest missing gap right now: the space between science and farming in the farming community or the ranching community. How do we bridge that gap and how do we support people in taking those first few steps in that transition? Because face it, you know, that transition can be really scary and can seem really full of risk if you're not kind of walking in the footsteps of someone that's been on that journey before.

9:10 So we're really passionate about speeding up the transition to full ecosystem function on landscape. And so what I heard you saying is that this is not so much of a—you're not training consultants maybe so much as maybe coaches. Would that be kind of a term where you're coaching the farmer, the rancher to help make these decisions or make these observations and analyze and, you know, make decisions based on what they're seeing?

9:43 Absolutely. You know, and I think if people want to go into consulting after they leave create, then absolutely that might be a career for you. But we're really training people to coach. And coaching is quite distinct from being the sage on the stage or being that know-all who turns up at your place and just shoves it down your throat. You know what I see as some of the barriers to uptake is the dogma and is not finding a way to have a conversation and meet people wherever they're at right now. Like I work with some really heavy chemical users. I've never sprayed any chemical in my life. I just don't—I haven't sprayed fungicides or pesticides or herbicides. I've used vinegar once, but you know, and so I'm working with people that are like, we did 47 different chemicals on this field. And I'm like, okay, cool. So this is our starting point and how do we take some steps forward? And I think the more that we can kind of put the dogma and the polarity to the side, because what we're seeing right now is this increase of polarization—oh you're tilling or you're using glyphosate or you're red or you're blue or choose your polarity. So that's not helpful. It's not helpful when we're looking at something that's emerging really quickly and here working in Montana seeing the massively rapid uptake in some regions that we've been.

11:12 Just to share this because I think it's really interesting is just out of Big Timber in a 16 mile radius, 44% of the land area is now using adaptive grazing management. They're using cover crops. They're using biologicals. I was branding one day and there were like 16 ranches there and it was a head and heeling traditional branding and suddenly a helicopter flew overhead and I was like that's interesting. I turned to the owner. I'm like what's this about? and he said, 'Oh, well, last year we applied algae, so we're doing the same thing this year.' And I'm like, 'What?' You know, like you're doing these super traditional families following in their grandfather's footsteps and yet here they are applying algae in helicopters. So using some of the best technology and I think that kind of really sums up where we're going, right?

12:02 Blending the tradition with the new tools. So really what you're doing is you're helping the land owner figure out what the best tools, the most appropriate tools for their context is going to be.

12:18 So 15 different countries. How many graduates of the program do you have out there?

12:26 We will have, I have to think if we're counting grads or not. I think yeah, we're at 80, 81. So the actual group of cohort of students is quite small. We take 20 to, well it really depends but yeah around that 24 mark. So the next one's actually going to be in Australia. And what I notice is people actually want to travel because we go to these extraordinary places like we were at White Oak Pasture in the first one, Cottonwood Ranch for the second one in Nevada. We went to All Thorp just north of London and then we were at Grizzly Creek in Montana. And these properties are extraordinary. So people travel for the experience as well as the learning. So it's one week in person like we have a week together and then it's 36 weeks online and then we come back together again. So people expect to travel twice but it's worth it.

13:30 So it's a 38-week program. Yeah, more or less. So you're not committing to four years of your life. You can get this training. So if people are interested in that, is there a website they can go to to get more information? Of course, they could come to Nebraska in June and meet. They should totally come to Nebraska. Yeah. We can talk about it. Yeah, and on the website, Integrity Soils, under professional.

13:58 Development. Yeah. And we generally get a pretty good application rate. This program we say it's the level of a master. It's like, it and students have told me this is the hardest thing they've ever done and also the most worthwhile thing they've ever done. So we're really focusing on not only that professional development and working with people and all the technical—like there's so much technical, there's a thousand pages of curriculum, so huge amount of technical behind this. But then 30% of it's your professional, your personal development. Like what's my relationship to money? What is my ability to work with people? Do I have imposter syndrome? Do I feel like I'm not good enough? You know, and I find that a lot in farming in rural communities as people. We sort of been trained to play small, and there's something about stepping out and being really confident and speaking and facilitating and all of that. It's almost like it's been ingrained to not speak up, and of all the times in the world now is when we need to be speaking up.

15:06 Yeah, for sure. Do you provide some training for your students on how to help farmers navigate the social aspects of making some of these changes as well? Because you know, that's as you well know in working with farmers all around the world, that's a big deal. You know, if you're changing, if you're doing things completely different than your family's ever done it and your neighborhood's doing it, that can be a hard thing. It's massive. I think it's the biggest thing for humans is we call it the social squeeze instead of peer pressure. It's like what's the power of the social squeeze and how we can use that for good. So it's why we use the example here at Big Timber. When we use social squeeze is that suddenly the weirdos are the people that aren't looking after their soil. The weirdos are the ones that are not using biologicals or cover crops or whatever that might be. We can reality.

16:05 Yeah, let's flip the narrative. And that's what's happening. And what I love about soil health is that it doesn't matter in your belief system. It doesn't matter in your political views. It doesn't matter your age. Soil health just makes sense. So if and you'll see this sometimes is you see maybe someone's been doing this for 20 or 30 years and their neighbors are not and their families not. And I'm always interested in that too. So what's going on across that fence line? Did you get dogmatic? Was there an argument somewhere along the way? Did people feel like you were superior? That's what I'm hearing about the regenerative movement is people think conveying anyway in social media or LinkedIn that you're better in some way and you're not right. We're all just.

16:51 People on a journey. So, how do we find a way to create regeneration as an invitation to really shift communities quickly? And you would have seen this with seed sales, right? That people are getting more and more interested and finding their different ways in the door for soil health. And it might be diverse multispecies cover crops, right?

17:16 I like that regeneration as an invitation to you know really draw in the community and yeah I think there is that perception it's a little bit like you know almost an agronomic self-righteousness or a perception of that. But you know what I have seen and found and experienced and I think that you know most the vast vast majority of people in this regenerative agriculture movement are they're very humble they're very open. They're very willing to share. And so I think it's more of a perception than it is a reality. But until you change that perception, it is that other person's reality from the outside.

17:58 One of the things I trained my farmers in doing is not using fence line photographs. Don't do it. Because actually, it happened early on and might have been like 2010. And we were doing a workshop and the farmer brought his soil to the workshop and his neighbor's soil and he did this whole demonstration on infiltration and his neighbor's soil was like concrete and his neighbor had lameness issues and high somatic cell counts and dairy but on and on he went. Anyway, there was a rural reporter there and the reporter wrote this up in New Zealand's national rural paper. So, what we didn't realize is the guy was actually leasing from the neighbor. So, he lost his lease. The guy made him print an apology in the paper. But it was that's not an invitation, right? So, if you do fence line images, what are you saying about your neighbor? That's not an invitation that shut the door. And you actually could have shut the door permanently. And so, I'm really careful about how is it we can structure this in a way that yeah, brings your neighbor in and digs a hole and we can dig a hole together and talk about what's going on.

19:09 Yeah. And I think that's part of what makes the shift. So, do a lot more comparisons of here's where I am and here's where I used to be, not here's where I am and here's where my neighbor is. Yeah. Because who likes that? And the thing is none of us like being told what to do either. So you think you can tell your neighbor that what they're doing is wrong. But this is what I want to do in the workshop with you Keith is we really want to dig into how do I benchmark? How do I know that my system's moving in the direction that I want it to? How do I really develop that nuance of reading my own landscape?

22:33 So Milan, the climatologist, his research says that it was 100 square kilometers, which is about 60 square miles. However, I mean you look at the rabbit proof fence and think about that impact from just ground cover to no ground cover. I mean you've probably seen those photographs in Western Australia. That's one fence line photo we can use, right?

22:58 Yes, yeah, use that fence line. That's a good one. Or use the fence line photograph with some that I use where the neighbors are like, yeah we don't care if you use it. But what we're seeing is that whole transpiration cycle, the water cycle, all of this.

23:20 I think when we come to numbers and we're like oh you need this much area, it again it's so context specific. And part of what we need to see is some of the research that they did in Saskatchewan and Montana on chemical fellows and the impact that was having on climate. Some of those chemical fellow areas are fairly large. But I think what needs to shift is just thinking about our own relationship there.

23:49 The one thing that I see in every rural community is we care about our neighbors. Like we genuinely care about your neighbor. And it's like, so if chemical plowing is robbing your neighbor of rainfall, then should we care about that? Or if that dust is then blowing across the road and someone dies, should we care about that? We can all individually be having an impact and then collectively have an even bigger impact.

24:18 So certainly what's happening here in Big Timber, I've been talking to some agencies who are able to measure using satellites, cameras on satellites, to actually look at how that's changing local climate dynamics because you're going to have soils that are warmer early in spring and cooler in the middle of summer. There was some research that just came out looking at the effect of big storms, tornadoes, hurricanes on the east coast, and all of that relates to how we're managing land on the whole continent. So if you have all this variation in temperature extremes, that creates more extreme climatic conditions.

24:59 So this is one of the ways I think that we're getting a different conversation happening is collectively there's so many things that we can do.

25:09 Yeah, and that's really interesting to think about and consider, and I would challenge even that that's a mindset narrative that we need to get out to landowners to encourage their tenants to be looking at some of these things because, you know, if that.

25:26 Landowner is involved in decision, then they have part of that responsibility for the community is on them as well and I don't know that they understand that.

25:35 Yeah. What I think is really interesting about this example here in Montana is Montana is probably one of the least regulated and legislated states in the country. And yet we're seeing the biggest uptake. And I think in part it's because people aren't being forced to do things. It's just the right thing to do. It's just the right thing to do for community, for water, whatever these concerns are. It's the right thing to do.

26:02 Well, hopefully what you've got going there can really be a model, you know, for other areas, other communities to then do and to implement. And the uptake will be much better if it's voluntary rather than forced or regulated. But unfortunately, if farmers, if we don't figure this out and we don't stop some of these dust storms, the nitrification of our water supplies, you name the pollutant out there, it will be forced upon people and it won't go nearly as well. Even if it's the same thing that you would have volunteered to do, you just have a bitter taste in your mouth if you're forced to do it. We all know that.

26:49 You know, working with people around the world, seeing what's happening in Europe now is removing cows off landscapes, you know, culling cows or being told like in Vermont, you know, you can't use compost or like it just you get the knee-jerk reaction that creates, you know, the unintended consequences or the following of landscapes in California, you know, being paid to turn your water off and turn it back into a desert. That's where it's going to go. You know, no one's talking about returning water to the aquifer or percolation, right, of what is happening for those people that are doing a really really good job.

27:25 And I think part of this is how do we tell our stories better, which is why I think farmers are integral in being able to communicate these stories more powerfully. Now, you don't need to be going and dealing with the politicians or whoever that might be, but where is our opportunity to communicate more effectively and do you give some of that training to your create folks as well of how to help the farmers understand how to communicate that better?

27:59 Yeah. Absolutely. And it's the thing of like this just me as an individual, but actually through integrity soils and through the training is how can we be more impactful across the globe, you know, and I'm not sure how many million acres we're up to. It might be 60.

28:15 Million acres. It's impossible to keep count of different organizations we're working with and then the students of how are they impacting on landscapes in their own community rather than here's a New Zealander who's going to come to Nebraska and tell you what to do like that. Just it fundamentally doesn't work right. Instead it's how does someone from Kenya talk to her own Kenyan communities in how do they reduce neonicotinoids or how are they reducing.

28:46 See, this is the thing that's happening in Kenyan coffee growing is people were putting on rat poison because they just knew it had a poison sign on. So this will work for insects. So they're putting rat bait onto their crops. And so she can come in and teach them how to read a label and teach them, well, do you actually need this particular chemical? How about we plant some marigolds in here for the nematodes? You know, just really thinking outside the box and then how impactful that one person can be in Kenya. I mean, she works with, I think, 250 coffee growers.

29:23 And we've been able to train her in how do you see that system and how do you communicate in a way that doesn't scare people or offend them. Although I promise to offend people at least once. So there's I do want to say that that prepare to be offended.

29:42 You know, sometimes you need that with one of the soil health principles of minimize disturbance. I'd like to start thinking about it as optimizing disruptions. And sometimes we need disrupted because we get in a groove. We get in a rut and we need to be disrupted out of that. So as we kind of wrap this up here a little bit, we encourage people to come to Bladen, Nebraska. You can go to greenco.com. All the information will be there to sign up for this in the field field day. We're actually buying a big tent. We're going to pitch the tent right at the end edge of the field. All the teaching will be right there. So we'll be able to go from the classroom to the field literally in just a few steps. And so it will be really interactive. Two days of going back and forth between some classroom type stuff, hands-on. You we promise everybody will get their hands dirty in doing this. We're going to be serving some really good locally sourced regeneratively grown food. So it's really going to be a great couple of days experience there. So we hope people can come and join us because it's going to be a really unique opportunity to learn from someone who has perspective from around the world of how can you read your own soils that you have at your own operation.

31:03 And so, Nicole, any last words on what else people, you know.

31:08 Well, we look forward to seeing you there. I think, yeah, expect to get your hands dirty. Expect to have some phenomenal conversations and bring your really curly stuff, bring the things that you're really challenged with or struggling with and let's leave those two days with something that you can immediately put into action or immediately have an insight that's going to give you new actions.

31:34 Yeah. So it's an opportunity. It's not the 38-week create course, but some of these same concepts will be talked about, but hopefully everyone leaves with the ability to go home and analyze and listen to their own soils. I'm look, we're a little selfish because we're doing it right on our farm. So we're going to get the benefit of that and I know that our soils are telling us things that we haven't been listening to. So we need to hear that and then we want everybody else to be able to hear that and learn that as well.

32:06 And so we want you to help, we want to help you read the context of your own operation. And this is one of the ways that we're doing it is by bringing in world-renowned experts like Nicole. Just real quickly, Nicole, you've written a book, Love the Soil. We'll have some copies of that here if people want to get that. Can they get that off your website as well? Yep, they can indeed.

32:33 Yeah, but it or bring your own copy and I can certainly sign it. I love seeing people's books are all full of highlights and tabs. Yeah. Yeah. So more than happy to sign your existing book. Are you working on your next book yet? Oh, it's in my head. It's in my head. It keeps changing. I got some really good advice from an author who said, 'Write something about something you don't know a lot about right now so you can do all the research.' So I've got a couple of ideas.

33:01 So yeah. Great, always something brewing. Look, we look forward to that as well. So Nicole, thank you so much for joining us. We are really excited about seeing you here in June and we hope a lot of the people listening to this will be able to join us. See you then.

33:19 My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska. But we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops.

33:41 That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed put into the right diverse mixes along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for your future generations.