The Haney Soil Test and Regenerative Agriculture: A Conversation with Rick and Liz Haney

0:00 Okay. All right, we are live now. Give it about 30 seconds here. I just want to make sure we're good on Facebook and then we'll go ahead. Welcome to everyone that is joining us this evening. We're really excited to have you. And once I get this on Facebook we'll be good to go.

0:55 Well, welcome everyone to week two of our Green Cover webinar series. Super excited today to have Rick and Liz Haney with us. We're going to talk about the Haney test if you guys have ever heard about that. But really we wanted to have a conversation with them in regards to their perspective on regenerative agriculture and soil health as a whole. But before I do that, we'll just go over some ground rules. This is your first time, everyone that enters in here is muted. But if you have any questions at any time during this interview, we will—I've got a set of questions that will ask for about 45 minutes, and then we'll open up to audience Q&A at about 6:15. So if you guys have any questions, you can go ahead and type those either in the chat bar or in the Q&A portion of this, and we'll get to those around 6:15.

1:46 But before that, I am going to ask these guys some questions, and so I wanted to introduce our speakers today. First, we have Dr. Rick Haney. He is a former soil chemist, microbiologist, and research farmer at the USDA ARS Grassland Soil and Water Research Lab in Temple, Texas, and is the creator of the Haney soil test. Rick grew up farming in Custer County, Oklahoma before he earned his PhD in soil microbial ecology and chemistry from Texas A&M University. Rick has researched soil ecology and soil testing for more than 30 years, which is longer than I've been alive, so well done for that, Rick. Rick is the new lead scientist and data analyst for the RegenAg Lab in the great state of Nebraska, where he will be working to improve our understanding and interpretation of soil test results related to production profitability and restoration under regeneratively managed systems.

2:43 And along with Rick is his wife, Liz Haney. Liz is a soil ecosystem scientist and agroecologist. Her passion is to connect people and create community in order to affect positive environmental, human, and economic developments through soil health and nature-based solutions. She is the owner of Soil Region LLC, which focuses on the realization of regenerative plans, training, and education based on the principles of regenerative agriculture and agroecology. She is also the co-founder of RegenMills and Heritage Ground, both of which we'll dive into. I'm really excited to hear about all the new and exciting things that have happened to you guys. I think the first time I met was two years ago at the first Soil Region Conference that you guys held, and it seems like y'all have both come a really long way since then.

3:32 So my first question with all of the accolades that you guys have is, what prompted you to get into your fields as far as the soil health aspect of things? What drove that passion for you?

3:55 Well, Noah, for me it was working on all those farms all those years when I was younger, watching the farmers struggle and stress and anxiety, and it just—it was like they couldn't catch a break, and it was really frustrating to watch it. Even though it was their livelihood more so than mine because I just worked for them, but it was very painful for me to watch them do that, and some part of me wanted to help in some way, shape, or form. And I went to college in '77, was at Brownstone for a year and a half and dropped out, and then went back 12 years later, and started back in, and got very excited about biology and chemistry, and everything just kind of rolled on from there. Decided to go into agriculture.

4:47 So I applied to all these different universities and got rejected by everybody because my grades weren't that good because of my first year and a half of college, and finally got Texas A&M on probation, which was super fun. So the first semester, I got rid of my business, all eggs in one basket, went down there, made it by the skin of my teeth, and then, you know, the rest is history. It was always driven by that desire to help those guys, and soil testing seemed to be one way because that was an input cost they had to do every year, and I just didn't think that we were up to speed on that. We weren't really following nature's pathway, and that we could do better.

5:32 So I got drug into it kind of kicking and screaming. I wasn't interested. All these weird people kept coming to...

5:41 Our house like Ray Archuleta and Gabe Brown, and why are we talking about this all night long? And finally, I guess they talked enough that it clicked in my brain that this was my kid's future, this is the planet's future. This is how we solve many, many problems from water quality to farmer profitability, and started to really jump in feet first.

6:11 So at what point in that journey did you start to realize that there was something missing as far as the soil test? For those who aren't familiar with the Haney test, that's something that came about one of your passion projects. What led you to the creation of that test?

6:30 Well, that started in graduate school actually. Before that I experimented when I was first in college on some biological products I added soil because I knew that I had this microbiology professor back in the 80s that was saying, you know, we're mixing stuff in the soil, the minerals aren't there, we've done something wrong to our soil. And I was like, what? You know, I didn't know what he's talking about, but anyway he sparked my interest. Got into some of that stuff, you know, I got to grad school. It was like, why are we not looking at how nature does that? And to give you a quick example, everybody was talking about fertilizer, nitrogen inputs and increased yield, right? So the more nitrogen you put on, the higher the yield. Yay. So the problem was it plateaued, but what everybody was looking at is how much nitrogen can you put on to make the highest yield? And I was always interested in the control, like where they didn't put any nitrogen on. What fascinated me was, how is that plant growing 100 bushel corn with no fertilizer inputs? What does that mean? Are we accounting for that? Have we, you know, are we picking that up anywhere or are we just overrunning that, putting on too much fertilizer?

7:42 So I started looking at how does this, how does this fertilizer affect the microbial world? Because I, you know, I understood that soil is driven by nature and by biology. It's not driven by chemistry. I mean, there was, we weren't, nature doesn't dump chemistry on the soil, it dumps biology in the form of seeds and microbes and plants and all these things, and we were just ignoring all that. And it really got me interested in looking at how is this soil reacting? And the one day CO2 stuff where we capture the respiration, the CO2 that comes out of the soil, it was fascinating to me because we were seeing, we knew these soils we were testing that we knew how fertile they were and some that weren't, and they were tracking that with this simple test that really was an eye opener for me. That nature was talking to us, we haven't been listening.

8:36 And did you get a lot of pushback from the scientific community at that point or was there like a lot of, oh wow, this opens the doors in a lot of directions? Well, the fun part was I thought it was amazing and I was very excited, and I was like, wow, we're going to change everything. This is like the 90s and I thought, man, this is so simple. Nature's giving us a simple answer to how we can start looking at this. And boy, that you talk about pushback, it's like, yeah, you can imagine you're standing there, you know, a ton of bricks fall on you. It's like, oh, okay, they're really into this, but no, because it was changing the norm. It was changing the way we were doing things. It was changing a mindset, you know, it's like, why would we look to nature? We conquered nature. It's like, oh, yeah, okay. You know, that was pretty, it wasn't fun.

9:20 I would like to add to that, there's still a lot of pushback, and yeah, that's why I laugh so hard. It is like a ton of bricks that has been falling on him. He's been running uphill the whole way.

9:35 Change is hard for sure, and you face a lot of adversity during that. What were some of the main, they'll go ahead and say, this change is hard, and I understand. And so all these farmers that I work with over the years, they, you know, they're trying to get by, right there. And so we're coming along, said, hey, let's do this different. Well, they already can hardly make any money, so now we're going to go change the system on them, right? I understand that. That's shocking, that's different, but my question to them and everybody is, so we're just going to keep doing the same thing? I mean, what? You know, we're not using rotary dial phones anymore, or we were using some, you know, so the technologies here, our understanding has to improve, and you know, those things go together.

10:21 So what were the main things that you were seeking to solve then with that test? You obviously identified some things that we weren't really testing, but what was it that you were really trying to solve?

10:33 Well for many many years in many research papers and god knows how many millions of dollars in years and decades of research they were trying to identify how much nitrogen the soil would give up—nitrogen mineralization—and they've been studying this forever and never came up with a decent answer. And so we started looking at: wait a minute, this CO2 coming off the soil is connected or married to nitrogen. You can't really have carbon without nitrogen. Is there a relationship here? Well it turns out yes there is. It's a pretty good relationship.

11:07 Immediately it was like: wait a minute, we might build a couple and find this elusive nitrogen that's growing all this corn and wheat with no fertilizer. You may be able to find that factor based on this simple test of one day CO2. And so that we started digging into that in the lab and out in the fields. And you know we started to see that come to fruition and it's like wow.

11:33 So the first paper I wrote was completely—they just rejected it out of hand. Said you can't do that. The reviewer said in big red letters: he said you can't do that. That's too simple. And I thought oh my, we're in big trouble here. This is wow. If you all can't get this... I responded to that guy and I said: so yeah it's simple like E equals MC squared. You can't do that either. And he, boy, made him mad. So yeah, that was a fun one.

12:05 How about quit? I, you know, how about quit graduate school after that? I can only imagine the frustration of like: if it's too simple, why are we trying to make things more complex than they need to be? That's basically what he was saying.

12:21 I'm not a fan of the super complex.

12:25 With that, are there other tests that have come out since then either from you or from the science as a whole that have continued to push kind of that idea that biology is actually living in the soil, or is the haney test really the only one?

12:40 Oh no. I, so since I've joined Lance Gunderson with Regin AG Labs, I've dove into a bunch of plant tissue data, PLFA analysis, and boy it's just been fascinating to me. And there's a lot there that we're still trying to unpack and understand. And one of the jobs I've assigned myself is that I'm comparing any test data with PLFA data on the same soil, which is really fascinating. There's so much there that we haven't even begun to unpack yet. I've come up with some new calculations that will probably roll out in the spring that I think will help us better understand these systems and how they work and how carbon plays and water quality issues and you know some of these things. So we're still pushing forward on that. There's a lot I've known for many years that the data we've acquired—there's a lot more information in there than we were aware of. We were just trying to get the test out there and get it moving. And so now we're going to start going a little deeper into this.

13:44 And so just so I understand, you're correlating the PLFA to the Haney test in conjunction with every test that you do?

13:50 Yeah, so yeah. What's important though is it's on the same, you know, a soil sample gets all these tests run on it. And so my approach is: this is like this is trying to tell me something. Nature's talking to me through this. And what am I hearing this right? What's the relationship? What does this mean? How do we use this to help farmers and ranchers make better decisions or understand their system better? Because before you manipulate a system you gotta kind of understand a little bit about how it works. Like working on a car, you know, you need to know how it works before you modify it.

14:27 So if people could only understand one or just a few things from your test, what would that take away be? If you could just get them convinced to change one thing based on this test, what would that be?

14:40 Well that would be the—so when I retired we had a 45,000 sample soil sample database and our average savings on nitrogen fertilizer per acre was about 20, or you know, anywhere from 20 to 30, 20 to 40 pounds is what we were seeing that we could cut back on and still maintain your yield. Because I'm not a big fan of let's just keep making higher yields because that just drives the price down. What we want to be able to do is maintain a decent yield with with

15:15 Reduced inputs, we can do that every instead of just once. So I would say the nitrogen savings that we find, the nitrogen that we've never measured before in the lab, and with the standard test is the most critical part.

15:33 Yeah, and I don't know why this is such a hard concept for people to understand: yield does not equal profit. We always talk in yield, but it's like the profit is really what actually pays the bills. So I love that you brought that up, just that we need to be thinking about how much you're actually putting in the bank, not just how much you put in the bin, and how much you spent on those inputs.

16:01 We'll get to inputs here in a second, but before I do that, can you share some of the biggest impacts you feel like your test has made? Either some general success stories or just as a whole?

16:13 So before I die, I would like for every farmer to understand that their soil is alive and that it's talking to them and is trying to tell them. It's trying to cooperate with you, and you know, the more we start to understand that, the better steward of the land we'll become. The better food will grow, the higher quality food will grow. These are the take-home messages here: that we've been taught it's just dirt, right? You build houses on it, you know, it's not. It's a living entity, a living creature. I mean, you would treat your child like we treat it, you know? And if we can just get that through so that people understand that, that's an important, very important thing for us going forward as a society and as a world.

17:00 I think he's being modest. So standing outside of himself, I can see the impact that the test has had and that he has had as a person on the whole entire community. Because what, how long ago was that when you first met Ray? This wasn't a thing. Soil health wasn't a thing, and what happened was this group of people came together who really cared and started a movement and made things happen, and part of that was the Haney test, but it's really the people that are behind the whole scene, the people that actually give a crap.

17:46 Yeah, and even like you said, the fact that the test was driven by you guys that had a passion for it, it wasn't just something that you guys made, invented just to make a bunch of money. Obviously there was a purpose behind that, and I think that is really what has driven a lot of things.

18:06 So I don't know if you guys want to touch on that at all, but first I want to ask you about the trial that we did last year with you guys regarding our cover crops, because obviously that's what we are focused on as far as improving the health of the soil, and that's why we're so passionate about cover crops. Can you point to anything regarding the Haney test and correlating that with cover crop specifically?

18:31 Yeah, that I think that was one of the more interesting things that I've done in the past few years was that study right there, because what that, I mean that just really opened my mind up because you know, pulling up a plant out of the ground and the soil that stays on that root, if you can get that off, shake that off, that root and get enough of that and analyze it, now you're looking at the micro root interaction that is so much more specific than just a bulk soil sample. And I was completely blown away by all those different cover crops and how they impacted respiration, nitrogen availability, calcium, magnesium, you know, all that stuff. And I just think that is something we can do in the future that will really help us because that in essence is your soil and your microbes based on the plants you're growing telling you if they like them or not. And how does it get better than that? We can do research for another 40 years in the lab. Let's just go ask nature, you know? Here's what, and that's the fun part about the test: it's a passive test, it's not harsh, it's not you know chemically demanding. It's just a, you know, water is extracted, H3A isn't extracted, the rest of it's respiration, you know, it's just a simple straightforward nature-based test. I feel like you can trust the data that's coming off of it better than if we're trying to manipulate chemicals and things like that. But that test right there, getting those roots and pulling those.

20:06 Pulling the soil from around the root, I mean that's really was eye-opening to me. And so we was talking to this guy, a deer guy, that you know is a wildlife college, Jason Staley, and he was looking at some of those results and he said hey, do you want the one with the most calcium to grow good antlers? And I said no, you want the one with the least calcium because that means it's probably been taken up. And it's like oh, so we're opening our minds about how what all this means. And the stuff represents province has been doing mind-blowing stuff. I mean we know so little, and that's what makes the future exciting is we're going to discover a lot of things based on some of these tests and how we use the information to expand our mind.

20:53 So one of the topics that we're hearing a lot about this off season is how expensive fertilizer is going to be, not even just expensive but how it's not even available in certain parts of the country. Just talked to a producer the other day that said he wasn't even able to purchase it ahead of time for next summer. They are not willing to commit for the fertilizer. So through the lens of your test, how are you guys answering that question for people on fertilizer recommendations and things like that? How can your Haney test help in people's fertilizer needs and lowering their input cost?

21:29 Well, I think that the first step would be to actually use the recommendations. We've had a lot of people do the Haney test. When I was at the lab yesterday and we ran all those samples for those people and we called, you know, say hey, what'd you find, did it work? You know, and they were like, we didn't follow your recommendation, we put on the same amount. I said then why did you do the test? You know? And then we had other people that said yeah, we actually followed the recommendations and then some, we put on even less than you recommended. And there was a lot of discussion about that. And I tried to explain to them that there are safeties built into that test so that we're not when we say you've got x amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, you got it. There's probably more there than that, but we're only going to go this far as a safety because you don't want to scare them to death. You know, if you're used to putting on 300 pounds to grow corn and we'd come back and say well you can do it 80, that's not gonna fly. You come back and say you can be 140, they might consider that.

22:37 Yeah, I think there's a common misperception that the Haney test doesn't recommend any fertilizer at all, and I've heard that. And obviously those people haven't done Haney test on their soils because that's not true. We're not anti-fertilizer, we want to just see what's there and save farmers money on their input. We just want to account for what's actually there that we've been ignoring because we didn't understand the organic fraction. Yeah, you know, we have so where do this is where all the yield comes in these control plots right? It's the organic nitrogen that the microbes are breaking down and providing to the plant in a symbiotic relationship. That's where the yield comes from. So why aren't we accounting for that? You know, and they'll argue oh yeah, we've already got that built in our calibration. No you don't, because if that was true, then nitrogen use efficiency would be 100. Would it? It's not, it's not even close to that. It's like 40 or 50 or 30. So the question is what's going on here? Why are we ignoring this very thing that's accounting for a majority of the nutrients that plant seeds? We're not having to pay for. These are important things I think.

23:51 Yeah, and you mentioned the control aspect in science and I think that's so important for farmers to start picking up that same practice. If you're taking a recommendation from a test, it's also important to have a control to see, even just a check strip on what happens if I apply nothing and what is the difference between what I'm doing and what nature is doing by itself? I think that's tremendously important for the farmers to take that control and learn from that as well. We've had a number of farmers over the years we talked them into doing that and they were all mad. That so their yields fell of course, but not by much, and that was shocking to them. And of course then they, well it's residual. It's like well no, residual is a myth. I mean it's one of our favorite myths. Nitrogen is residual, it just stays there. It's like no, it does. Phosphorus, potassium do, nitrogen does.

24:46 Nitrogen is going to say bye bye as soon as it can. When it rains, when it leaks, there's so many pathways for nitrogen to go. They want to make up, oh it's this or it's that, they just don't want to admit that nature has this figured out. But if you think about the plains before we had fertilizers, nothing grew.

25:14 Liz, obviously you were reluctant to join this party because people were keeping you up late at night talking about soil that you weren't interested in. But now you've gotten to this point where you are incredibly passionate about soil health and the movement behind that. In the fact that you ended up starting this company Soil Regen, what led you to starting Soil Regen and can you talk just a little bit about what you and your organization do?

25:41 It's a funny thing. All those people that were keeping me up late at night, Rick and I were actually sitting on the back porch and I thought, how can I get everybody here again? Well, I'll have a conference. And Rick's like, you don't know how to put on conferences. I was like, no, we'll figure it out, it'll be fine. And so from that started Soil Regen. And it was bringing everybody together and then actually having farmers come up afterwards and say, you changed my life. This experience changed how I'm going to do things. And it might just be one or two people, but that is the foundation from where Soil Regen started.

26:25 I had to put it on hold for a while as I went to the corporate world. And then this past summer, Rick and I and our family and a whole bunch of other people went on a giant road trip from Iowa to Kansas and Nebraska. And it really reignited after COVID that passion for getting out there and connecting people with each other. So I came home, quit my corporate job, and started rebuilding Soil Regen with Russell Hedrick and Sarah Varbal. So we're really excited to connect people with each other, to give them some training and overall regenerative knowledge, but then also take it to the farm where they know how to set up a planner or make a plan for their farm for the next seven years and take it to the boots on the ground level.

27:25 Can you tell me why in your words it's important for regenerative producers to go more direct to consumer? Because I know that's something that you guys are focused on as far as the other enterprises you are doing. Can you talk to me about why that's important for the producer?

27:40 Yeah, so I think we know a farmer right now in the current commodity market makes maybe six cents every loaf of bread. So they are out there dealing with elements, they are subject to the commodity market, to the weather, to all of the different factors that they can't control. And then you have these farmers that are very passionate about improving their soil, they're passionate about their community and their environment. And I know that the consumer wants that story and that the farmer deserves to be paid for the efforts that they are putting forth to improve water quality and resilience in their communities. So we are very passionate about connecting the consumer straight to the farmer. And previously there hasn't really been a method for them to go about doing that with marketing or getting their commodities straight to the consumer in a fashion within the industrial food and ag system.

28:43 And that was kind of how you guys ended up starting the Regen Mills and Heritage Ground, correct?

28:49 Yeah, so we heard about some people that wanted to start a big milling facility, a couple million dollars. But the farmer was still going to have to truck all of their regenerative products there, and it wasn't going to really give them any benefit profitability-wise for their efforts and being regenerative. So we thought, okay, we'll take it to them. And then a lot of these people don't want to market and they don't have the time to market. They're out working 15 hours a day trying to fix equipment and doing harvest, and really trying to make their operations work. So we're going to also help them market their products and get it out there to the consumer.

29:37 That's really cool. These questions will be kind of for both of you because in your guys's

29:41 You've traveled all over the United States and I'm sure you even have some experience internationally with producers. What do you think agriculture will look like in the next five years?

30:02 Well I hope it looks a lot more like regenerative. I hope to God that regenerative place is organic. I really do. I think it's the future. It's the way to do it. I think we'll get better at understanding how soil works, we'll get better at measuring it, we'll get better at getting down to what's actually important, and I'm not talking about AI. So we're at Regen and Lab at Labs have been using something called BI. We have a new program called BI and we call it biological intelligence, very different than artificial intelligence. I mean, I think before we turn everything over to AI that we try to understand how the system works first, and hopefully we'll push towards that. I think you're going to see a big change when the marketing kicked in with people, when consumers start to understand that this is the food that I grow in my garden, this is the stuff I want, that I think we're going to see when the consumer demands it, the farmers will respond, and I think we'll see a very different world in five years.

31:15 I don't know. I can't think five years into the future. I'm just hanging on to today and trying to get to tomorrow. Things are moving so fast and I can't believe that momentum from just six months ago and the interest that people have in trying to be a part of the regenerative ag community. Like one of our farmers says, you know, now is the time. The iron's hot. This is where things are happening, and we're really passionate about it. So we want to be a part of it. So I think I'm hanging on to the tail of a dragon right now.

31:55 Well, a huge aspect of that momentum that you mentioned is from the innovators that have been really pushing a lot of this because like what you said, probably 10, 15 years ago there really wasn't a lot of talk about this, but obviously right now it is very big in mainstream. But what do you see the early adopters and the innovators working on? What are some of the next big things in regenerative agriculture?

32:31 I see several innovators stepping up and branching out into new markets, trying to do more innovative things on their farms. If you're an innovator, you're always going to keep trying to do different things. So where they have been innovating in the past, they're going to keep doing the same thing, and whether that's different soil health practices, different ag practices, different markets, these people are always thinking of something next and always thinking of a way to improve their way of life, their family's legacy, the way that they interact with the environment and the community, and I think it'll just keep evolving.

33:23 I really think the cover crop deal in the future is going to be really important. I think we're going to get much better at picking the right mixes for a certain area or a certain practice or a certain crop that you're going to grow behind it. I think we can really make some improvement there. There's going to be innovations in planting, there's going to be innovations in in-field sensing. I think sensors will be a big part of the future. I know everybody wants to do carbon from satellites, which is great to push for, but we're not quite there yet. I've read some papers lately that these companies have come up with all this great optical sensing and all this wonderful stuff, and of course they're comparing it to the Walkley Black method for carbon, which I think was in the 1950s. So it's funny to me that we're reverting back to the ancient stuff to verify the new stuff instead of thinking about, well, maybe that wasn't the right way to look at it. I think there's going to be big changes in our thinking. I think there will be big changes in how things go to market, like Liz is talking about, and to your point earlier, it's a great point you made there, Noah, that I don't make—I've never made a dime off the Haney test, just so you know. That was a lot of people think I'm rich.

39:33 More profitable but there's a lot more than that that goes with it, which is a way of life and spending time with your family and enjoying farming instead of going out and killing every day. You're making things live.

39:51 Yeah, we had a farmer that was in here. He was an elderly gentleman in his 80s, came in to buy just about five pounds of cover crops for his garden, but he had a large farm as well. And he said doing this cover crops and he was doing some roller crimping experiments. He's like, this is the most fun I've ever had in farming in 80 plus years of being alive. And I just think that's such a great testament to this way of life is that it's not really just yes, we're focused on the health of the soil, and I totally get that, but ultimately what we're focused on is making a living for ourselves and for our future generations. And so keeping that in mind and how those just kind of go hand in hand, you know, when you improve nature it gives back and improves your way of life as well. So I think that's really neat.

40:42 I got one or two questions here before I open it up to some audience Q&A. So for those that are watching, you participants, if you guys have any questions, go ahead and type those out now in the chat or the Q&A. Before I get to that, what is the biggest obstacle that you see prevents producers from going down this regenerative path, and what is your advice to them? We'll start with you, Liz.

41:10 I think I've heard all of us say, you know, it's the stuff between your ears. So being open and like Rickett said earlier, you know, change is very hard and it's scary to jump out there. I know that just, you know, jumping out of the corporate world and going into this space, but my god how rewarding is that to see change and be a part of the change. So I really think if people can get the education and the background and the community support they need, they would be more apt to changing.

41:50 I think the thing that strikes me the most about it is I've had conversations with several farmers that are my age or older, and you know, they're staring at what happens after I've gone, and we've talked at length about legacy. And so do you want to leave your farm the way you found it or in better shape than you found it? I mean, these are the things. What do we pass on? What does the next generation inherit? How do we make this better for them? And it's appealing to people, I think. You know, my grandfather taught me that when I was young, very young, and he said, you know, make things better than you found them. If you'll just apply yourself throughout your life in that way, you'll live a fairly rewarding life. And those are true words. And so that's a challenge to get farmers to go. You know, one of my favorite deals is C.R. Christensen is one of my best friends, and I used to work for him farming. He's 75 and he's still farming the same way he was 50 years ago. He's known me for a long time, but you know, that's why he doesn't. You know, he uses my tests and stuff, but he didn't for a long time because he's like, that boy's an idiot. I don't know. I listen to him, you know? Because he knew me. He knew me since I was 18. But the point I'm trying to make there is even he had the ability to look at that and go, wait a minute, this you're making sense here. This is starting to, because he really does care about the soil. He doesn't understand he's killing it, but he's starting to understand that, you know? And it's hard for him to admit he's been doing it wrong.

43:26 And so, you know, I'll tell you this a little quick. So I took these little sensors I've built, we're going to start getting out in the field with and stuff. And so it's basically we went into his skill field and then a field that wasn't filled right next to it, 20 feet apart, stuck these sensors in the ground, let them run. And he looked at them and he said, are you telling me that way I'm farming is killing my microbes? And I said no, the microphone saw it and he knows autograph. That was, I will never forget the look in his face because you could see him like, I got a failure. I've been, I've, you know. All I said, no, no, they're still doing. You can bring them right back. They'll respond to you, you know? When you change it. So that was, I'll never forget that moment with him in the rest of my life.

44:15 Was amazing to watch that transition. Yeah, it's never ever too late to make a change. And nature's resilient. That is, nature knows best. I think that's a really cool testimony to that.

44:31 We've got some questions here that are coming in. The first one is in regards to pulling a test. When you pull a sample for your test, is it the same six inch sample as a regular test? Yes, it is. And one of the things we tried to do and designed it, so we still run aspects of the standard steps. I mean, we want nitrate. You know, we run, we do the same very similar things, but we do a lot of things in addition to that. So we settled on the zero to six because that's what everybody's used to doing. So we wanted to be able for labs to be able to not be bottled up by all that. So yeah, now ideally it would be more fun to take like a zero to three or zero four because the ball game's in the top. But we actually dilute the response of some of those tests by taking a six example, let alone twelve. But I see value in all of those things. So that's a long-winded answer to yes, zero zero six is right.

45:34 Have you done any that have been deeper than that? I mean, what's the what kind of results do you see when you go a foot or two feet down? Is there any response or does it just continue to dilute that out? Yeah, it does. It dilutes it out and it's really interesting. We've had pulled samples every two inches down to twelve inches. Look at those individual fractions. It's absolutely fascinating. And what blows my mind is the CO2 respiration response from a zero to six versus a six to twelve. Because if you think about that, you're taking the sample out of the field at zero to six and six to twelve, sending it to packing it up, send it to a lab. They dry it, grind it, and wet it back up and get CO2 from it, and it still responds differently. You would think that since the lack of oxygen in the six to twelve is why it doesn't expire very well. Well, that's a community of microbes that thrive on not that much oxygen. And so when you expose them to a bunch of oxygen, they still don't really respond. It's amazing to me that they act the same way in soil that they do in a laboratory setting. And maybe it's just me, I just weird, but that's amazing to me that nature keeps its act together and that we do see those differences. It's and it depends on what it is. The health of the soil too. So if you have a compacted crappy soil, even tilling, your six to twelve is going to be nothing, right? You're going to have a plow pan. If you have a really healthy cover crop soil, it's had deep roots on it, you're going to have a good six to twelve inch as well.

47:13 We did one study down to four feet and I think we were going every six inches down to four feet. And what was fascinating about that was where the phosphorus was, where the potassium was, where the nitrogen was. The nitrogen was moving down. The P and K weren't. And the respiration there was still. We were getting respiration down at four feet in the lab. Now this is in the lab. But you know, it wasn't very much. It was just a linear fall off as you went with depth. CO2 just went down like you would expect. That's right. A lot to learn.

47:49 Ted asked how does the Haney nitrogen testing regime correlate or compare with the amino sugar nitrogen testing methods. That's a good question. I actually just work with that. You talk about, he's talking about the Illinois soil test with Mulvaney. And interestingly, many many years ago I did a bunch of samples and ran his test on it, learned how to do it, and did it. And what was interesting to me about that was I was getting really strong relationships with one day CO2 and the organic nitrogen that we find with the Haney test is going to be lower than Mulvaney's deal by and large because that's a more forceful extraction of nitro amino sugars. And you're using one molar sodium hydroxide and that rips all the nitrogen. Now, so that's not a nature-based test, but it's an interesting test because I applaud him back then because he stuck his foot out there, his neck out there, and said wait a minute, we're not doing this right. And you know, he was right. But they aren't super well correlated because they're such different fractions. This is a water extractable organic nitrogen test because it rains that water. And that's the sodium hydroxide ripping all the nitrogen test out. So they're kind of apples and oranges, but still valid testing.

49:22 Along that same lines, David asked, do you use much plant tissue analysis as a way to corroborate testing results? I am just now looking, so I've never really had access to plant tissue analysis. We didn't do it in our lab. We were so focused on doing this, but now since I'm with Lance, I'm starting to look at that. Matter of fact, today I downloaded a whole bunch of tissue analysis data. I'm looking into that because I'm fascinated by what these nutrients are doing in these different plants. Some of them are cover crops and some of them corn and soybean, and all these different plants, and how are they responding. So the answer is no, I haven't looked at that yet.

50:02 Yeah, I'm going off script here, but I think that would be really fascinating to see, even from the cover crop plots that we do, in taking plant tissue analysis of those in using different biologicals that we apply, and even in our controls, I think would be really, really interesting.

50:21 An anonymous attendee asked, do you recommend a particular lab in Canada that is doing the Heany test correctly? So I'll let you decide if you want to. If there's one up there that you want to. There is. It's called Regen Ag Lab in Nebraska, there you go. So you do accept soil from Canada? That's not one they have to custom across the border? Nope, they accept it. I'm not aware of any labs in Canada that do it. Are you? Well, I no, nobody that's talked to me, I can tell you that. That's all I can tell you. Nobody has talked to me about it.

50:57 I had a guy call one time, well nobody can interpret this. They didn't. I said well, I know a guy. I know a guy. He did.

51:06 What tools? Let's see. What tools do you guys see as a cover crop company that's involved in this industry? What tools do we need to be providing to these farmers in order to either implement these tests or just strictly apply some of the principles that they're learning to their fields? How can we as a company support the regenerative ag movement?

51:37 Well, Green Cover Seed is already supporting the regenerative ag movement. You're supporting lots of events like the big soil health event, which I appreciate. But I think your cover crop study that you did was amazing, and expanding on that would be incredible. And in really processing that data and getting it out to the consumer would be very helpful.

52:02 I agree with that because the more I looked at that data, it just jumps out at you like that the soil that was planted into was selecting this is what we want. And so if you did that in whatever soil, some you know in Texas, in Iowa, in Michigan, and wherever, I bet you get a different response. But boy, having the microbes in that soil select the cover crops for you, I think it would be a game changer.

52:36 Liz, you mentioned the big soil health event. Do you want to quick kind of talk about that? I didn't address that in the talk, but I would love to hear what you guys have got planned.

52:49 Yeah, so the big soil health event is happening in Riverside, Iowa, at the Riverside Casino on December 6th and 7th. You can register on our website, axelregion.com. And what we're really trying to do is facilitate a conversation between farmers in the ag industry and consumers and CPGs, and get everybody on the same playing table, because there's a lot of people in different industries. There's farmers doing different things. There's carbon companies doing different things, and maybe not everybody's talking to each other. And so we'd really like to get everybody there so we can have a real conversation about how we all work together as a community and build relationships to further soil health.

53:41 Again, I'll say Green Cover Seed is a major sponsor, and we're very appreciative of that. And there are a lot of people within the ag industry that are very interested in seeing this move forward so that they can start having those conversations with farmers and with each other.

53:59 And are you starting to see more and more of those from the consumer product standpoint? Are you seeing more consumers kind of pushing that, or is it the, do we have too many regenerative producers that are producing too much product that the consumers don't want? Where does that, yeah.

54:16 We don't have too many regenerative producers. There's not enough, I think right now to fill the demand side, especially as we continue down the journey of educating consumers more and more. There are lots of consumers that have no idea what regenerative is. I had someone ask me if the regenerative beef was plant-based meat beef the other day. So there's a lot of education that needs to be done and it's hard to reach out to all these different groups. So anybody that can help facilitate that conversation and get people to the table so everybody can learn and realize this is a very all-inclusive group—it matters to anybody that eats, it matters to anybody that farms, anybody in the ag industry. We all need to pull together to go in the right direction, and that's what we're trying to do.

55:18 Liz, can you give me your simple definition of regenerative agriculture? David Crowley would like to know. My definition—it is a journey in improving the soil and like Rick said, leaving it in a better condition than where you found it. I think that's a good question to ask. Obviously it's a simple question, but we've seen a lot of political aspects of the term, even organic. So I think identifying what we mean by regenerative agriculture is really important. You had kind of touched on that as far as the standards of products that you guys are growing for, like the Heritage Grounds, in setting some kind of standard for what does it actually mean for something to be regeneratively grown. Can you touch just a little bit on what those standards are for you guys?

56:13 So for Region Mills, we're using non-GMO and heritage grains specifically. But there is also a process for verifying whether a farmer's soil is regenerative or not, which is not out there yet but will be someday soon and will be announced sometime in the future. The neat thing about it is it's not comparing an Iowa soil to a Kansas soil because you can't do that. Somebody I know that has developed some different ways to do that, and we're all working together towards verifying these regenerative practices.

57:11 Bruce says investing in the soil bank across the spectrum from farm to consumer—we should be living on the interest, not spending it down like we have been doing. That's a great call, members. Okay, with that, I think we'll wrap things up here. Next week we have Lance Klesig from Minnesota who will be joining us. He's going to be talking about the challenges and the successes of trying to implement no-till and regenerative ag in the upper midwest. Because a lot of what I've noticed is a lot of producers are down south, either in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, kind of where you all are at. But we wanted to go up north because one of the biggest things we hear is like, well, that doesn't work in my area. It just doesn't work. We don't get enough rain or it's too cold or we get too much rain. So we wanted to find a producer up there. Lance has been in with some really great people understanding ag and the like, so we're really excited to talk to him next week.

58:10 Before I let you all go, Liz and Rick, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Do you have any final words of wisdom for us? I like the regenerative question—how do you define that? That's a good one. And it's not just the soil, right? It's regenerating your life. It's generating the quality of your life, the farming. I mean, come on, farmers have been taking it on the chin for a long time, and it's way past high time that they start living a better quality life, making a decent living, and providing something that's wholesome and good. I mean, this is how I define regenerative—it's a multi-spectral thing. It's not just soil, you know. It's plants and lifestyle and all that stuff. I think that's a good one. I'd like to see the farmers be very successful. Jimmy Yemen says preach it, long live the soil. I was going to say long live the soil. You know, shoot, I still trademark infringement. Well, okay, so news flash for you—the soil's going to be fine. We're the ones that are going to suffer if we don't.

59:29 All right, thank you guys so much. You enjoy the rest of your evening. If you did not get in at the beginning or you want to share this with a friend, we do have it recorded. I will get it posted to YouTube later this week, so you can feel free to share that. Otherwise, we'll see you all next week on our webinar series. Take care, everyone.