Podcast Episode

John Mesko (00:30):

Hi, I'm John Mesko and welcome to another episode of the People of Soil Health. Today's podcast is a little bit unique. It's a special one in many regards. Kent Solberg, who is a livestock and grazing specialist for the Sustainable Farming Association. He is also a speaker and a field consultant for Understanding Ag, and he is a farmer himself. And what's a particular interest to me is that he's a friend, a former coworker, a former partner in the work of promoting and understanding soil health and getting the word out to existing farmers and new farmers. And Kent and I have had a number of conversations – many, many long conversations – about the future of agriculture and how things will go in the future. Kent, it is a great pleasure to have you on our podcast.

Kent Solberg (01:23):

John, it's always great to talk with you. Glad to be here.

John Mesko (01:27):

The things that we're going to be talking about today are things that, as I said, you and I have talked about many, many times, I feel like I kind of know where you're going to go on some of these answers to questions that I've got. So I'm hoping that our conversation will be a chance for people to kind of dip into the community that you and I have shared for many, many years now, and learn about the things that we're doing not just with the organizations we work with, but what we're doing as individuals in this soil health community. So it's a real pleasure.

John Mesko (01:59):

One of the things that I think is important, and we've talked about so many times is having an understanding of what soils are doing on our own farms, and I know that your work in agriculture is really rooted. I mean, the first time I met you, you were dairy farming, and that was pretty much exclusively what you were doing. How has your work as a farmer, and how has that influenced your movement towards emphasizing more time and more of your career in soil health?

Kent Solberg (02:33):

Yeah, John, I think, we saw on our own farm just the phenomenal changes through the implementation of the principles of soil health and what it can do for the land, what it can do for the bottom line, what it can do for the farm, what it can do for the animals, and ultimately, what it can do for our small rural communities was so profound and I started to get asked by you and others to start talking about those experiences and just that opportunity grew and that opportunity to help other farmers and yeah, it's really about helping other farmers do better at what they're doing to improve their bottom line, to improve their operation.

Kent Solberg (03:15):

That's a big reason why guys like you and I get up in the morning because we love working with farmers, we love the land, we love the landscape and agriculture and we just want to help them in any way we can. And so that's a big driver for me to take my experiences, my knowledge base that we've built, couple that with others, network with others, like yourself and other organizations just to bring really good and really powerful information to help build networks and to help farmers grow and do a better job and keep them on the landscape and even create opportunities for that next generation.

John Mesko (03:52):

Well, and as we've talked so many times, the pathway forward in agriculture really is about unity and not divisiveness, and it's about everybody working together to improve, and to grow and expand a capacity that we have to produce healthy food for people. And I've said many times that the core area of agreement is soil health. Everybody understands that healthy soil is the foundation of the things, whatever it is that you want to do in agriculture, you got to start with healthy soil.

John Mesko (04:27):

So one of the things that we run into with just about everybody that we talked to on this podcast is, what is your definition of soil health? And so I'm curious how yours has been refined and evolved over the years. But how do you think of healthy soil?

Kent Solberg (04:44):

Yeah, great question, and glad you have that discussion with so many others. It's so important. I define soil health as soil function and then what is soil function? It's the ability of the soil to not only capture, but also store water. It's also the ability of that soil to cycle nutrients, and when we address those things, almost every issue in agriculture under our control, we can't control the weather, we can't control regulation, we can't control the markets, but all the things we can control in the production and potential profitability of our farm fall under the ability to help that soil capture and store water and build that nutrient cycling.

John Mesko (05:27):

I think that that's really our responsibility as kind of stewards of the land is to make sure that we leave that soil in that highly productive function that you just mentioned.

Kent Solberg (05:38):

All of us as farmers are dealing with a degraded soil resource for one reason or another, but we know we can make it better and we could do it fairly rapidly.

John Mesko (05:49):

Yeah, I agree. And as I've said before, back in the day when I was in college, we were told essentially, the soil is a medium for holding the crop and we put nutrients on in the spring. So it's there for the crop. And the purpose of the soil is to be a place for the roots, and it's not necessarily really thought of at that time as a living organism that can be something a farmer works with to enhance and to grow crops.

Kent Solberg (06:20):

We've made such strides in yields from breeding and refining fertilizer programs over the last 70 or so years, and that's been so impressive and it's been important work, but at the same time, anytime we focus too hard on one thing, even if we're breeding livestock, if we focus too much on one trait, we take hits or losses in other aspects, and we've kind of done that in ag and now I think we're trying to move with soil health move towards balance. How do we maintain that productivity and profitability on the farmland that we have because we are losing farmland to industrial development, and even erosion in many situations and housing developments.

Kent Solberg (07:05):

We've got to maintain that productivity out there. But at the same time, how do we do that because we're realizing that soil is a biological system? We don't carry microscopes around with us in the field – although a few farmers are now becoming convinced that that might be worthwhile – but we don't see this world that's around us and beneath our feet because we don't have that. We can see the results of that more easily and we'd like to instruct farmers and show them those techniques to do that, but we really don't see the organisms that are down there doing this work and just a realization that 90% of soil function is based on the biology in the soil. Wow, that's crazy.

Kent Solberg (07:48):

Now, that doesn't mean it's separate from the physical properties of that soil or the chemical things that are going on in that soil, particularly in relation to plant production. They're all coupled together, and they're all important, but we're just realizing and we're moving our understanding from being a chemical base to synthetic base system just with a focus on yield to this, like you said, it's this biological organism, it's this whole ecosystem in itself, and exactly how powerful that is and influencing everything else.

John Mesko (08:23):

Well, you're absolutely right. And thinking through how as producers, as farmers, stewards of the land, how can we work with that biological system? What are some of the practices that you've employed on your own farm? And as you work with other farmers, what are some of the things that you're maintaining as principles of soil health, and how do those work in concert with each other to manage or influence that soil biology?

Kent Solberg (08:52):

Yeah, just a little background. You brought up the principles, John, and it's really learning how to apply those principles in the context of not only your farm but a particular field that's so important. I think so often we want the recipe card or just tell me the practice. We've operated that way in agriculture for decades, and we're used to that, we're accustomed to that and then a high risk venture like agriculture, it kind of feels like it takes some other risk away if somebody hands me the recipe for this field, I'm not making all the decisions.

Kent Solberg (09:28):

Really what we're focusing on is soil health are these key principles of keeping the soil covered, minimizing disturbance, increasing plant diversity, keeping a living root in the soil and integrating livestock. And we've worked to apply all of those on our farm and some of the specific practices that we've used, the biggest one has been increasing plant diversity for all the farms that I've worked with John and I'm working from farms, very small, everything from small vegetable farms all the way up to you know 20,000 acre row crop farms and 8000 cow dairies now, and so we cover the gamut and just increasing plant diversity is one of the most powerful things and quickest things most farms can do, and we did that on our farm. And just the explosion in forage production that we saw in the subsequent years was huge. We coupled that with adaptive high stock density grazing, and integrating multiple species of livestock on the landscape, as well as out-wintering cattle or bale grazing specifically was the practice we've been using for over 20 years now on our place. Those have been absolutely huge.

Kent Solberg (10:42):

Full season complex cover crops has been part of adding that plant diversity, and that's been very powerful not only in building and promoting soil biology, but also extending the grazing season and help keeping feed cost down for those animals. So we find that a lot of these practices not only stimulate biology, but they also help the bottom line too.

John Mesko (11:05):

Well, you know Kent, of those principles one of the things that is in my view a little more difficult to get my head around and maybe for other folks is this whole idea of crop diversity or this use of plant diversity when talking about getting out into a grazing situation or a pasture or whatnot. And you identified a few different things that people can do. Bale grazing, and that's something that I could have a whole conversation about as you know, it's something that I think is a great way for someone to do it on the cheap to import weed, not weed seeds, but crop seeds from other farms or other grazers and put that out into the pasture land for sure. Complex cover crops are certainly a way to do that, as you mentioned, getting extended grazing available to the livestock. But what about expanding the crop rotation? And I'm talking about adding a cash crop to the rotation? Does that have the same impact in terms of expanding plant diversity, or can it have that same impact? How does that fit in?

Kent Solberg (12:20):

It's a step in the right direction. It really is. We see time and time again, just adding, for example, a cereal to the corn in soybean rotation, we see lots of positives and benefits really quickly. We also plateau really quickly, because it is diversity, but it's limited diversity. And we're finding that we need to include at least one example of each of the plant functional groups in that rotation and the plant functional groups are grasses, legumes and broadleaf. So we've got a grass, we've got corn already in the rotation, we've got a legume, we've got soybeans, how do we get broadleaves in there, and excuse me, if they are all on the same acre of ground on the same year or at the same time, that's when things seemed to really happen because those different plant functional groups support different functional groups in the microbial community, and when all those functional groups are present, really powerful things happen and the increase is not linear, it's exponential.

Kent Solberg (13:26):

That's one of the things we've learned in the soil health world is things move so rapidly so quickly upward. It's always exponential growth. And so I say that to encourage people because the more assertive I guess you are in implementing these things, the quicker you're going to see responses and results. But the beauty of adding for example, a cereal, another grass, okay, so now we're adding actually another one of the four agronomic plant groups, warm season grass, cool season grass, warm season broadleaf, cool season broadleaf, the cereal does that but the other thing the cereal does is either an opportunity to intercede something else such as a couple clovers in that cereal to prep that ground for a corn crop next year particularly like legume-based clovers and get some nitrogen fixation and be able to credit that towards it, or to build in a cover crop after that cereal has taken off because anytime we have 30 or 40 days a growing season left before our first frost, it's an opportunity to build biology.

Kent Solberg (14:32):

Even if it's not a crop we can harvest, we're harvesting solar energy, we're putting carbohydrates through photosynthesis into the ground. It's feeding that microbial community, we're keeping that soil covered, we're keeping a living root in the soil, all of that building soil biology, anything we can do to build soil biology is huge because when we build soil biology, we build soil aggregation, when we built soil aggregation, we built the ability of that field to handle and hold water and trafficability.

Kent Solberg (15:02):

Two big things in the last few years in the Midwest, our corn and bean farmers have really struggled with this ponding and trafficability on these fields during planting and harvest. And if we build soil aggregation, and we can only do that through biology – only biology, we can't buy a tool that's going to fix this – when we build it through biology, we start addressing some of those big issues. It's a little hard to put dollars on trafficability and being able to get in the field at the proper time, but we know timing and agriculture is so important to productivity. Absolutely, so important.

Kent Solberg (15:41):

So what does it cost to get that track hoe out there to extract that tractor from the mud hole? How many acres do you need to lose to ponding because of a high rain event before you lose profitability over the entire farm? Now everybody's numbers are different and some people have tried to put numbers, I know, to ponding and how many acres it takes to make up for every last acre due to ponding. So you got to do your own math, you've got to be honest with yourself on what it costs to deal with these things. But if we improve soil aggregation through building plant diversity out there, and including these plant functional groups, that has a value to you, and there's a lot of people trying to put numbers on that, and that's very important work that's being done.

Kent Solberg (16:29):

We're not quite there yet because there's different ways to slice and dice numbers all the time, and there's no one way to do it, and so that's a bit of a challenge in itself. But we're honing in on the fact that, I mean, what's the stress of burying your combine cost? Just in health, just in family relations and working relations, and sleepless nights, how do we put a dollar value on some of that stuff? And so by building diversity in there – and we can do that – we're really honing in on what we can do, for example, in corn, for interseeding in corn, soybean’s a bit tougher, but there are things we could do in advance of the soybeans, but then building in, building a cereal into the rotation.

Kent Solberg (17:15):

Dwayne Beck out at Dakota Lakes Experiment Station crunched some numbers a few years ago. He took three years worth of average yield data, average price data and average cost of production data, three years, and in the course of three years, he took a 1000-acre operation, okay? And so he took real numbers from real farms over three years, and applied them to a hypothetical 1000-acre operation, and at the end of those three years the net profitability over the entire farm if only 20% of the farm was planted to spring wheat (he used spring wheat as his example) if only 20% – 200 acres out of that 1000 – was planted the spring wheat, the net difference in profitability to the entire farm was just a couple hundred dollars an acre difference. That's chump change on a 1000-acre farm, right?

Kent Solberg (18:09):

We can mess up somewhere else and blow two or $300 one way or the other pretty easily. So it was really nonsignificant. But the beauty of that is, is that on every field one year in five, there's all sorts of different options that are available for building plant diversity in there. And we're finding that as we build plant diversity in there, those benefits can last a couple of years. It's not just a one and done. It's never just a one and done. And so it's a huge opportunity. You may not make a ton of money off that spring wheat, and this is just a spring wheat example. It creates all sorts of other opportunities. And all he was looking at was just that, not what else it could mean for ability to reduce input costs, the ability to increase trafficability, even the ability to integrate another enterprise such as custom grazing of livestock, which we can talk about later if you'd like. It opens up the door.

Kent Solberg (19:13):

Now the next challenge for many people then is markets, okay? My elevator, they only take corn and beans. There's the ethanol plants, it's my other option. I don't feel like I have a lot of options available to me and I totally get that. But what we're finding is, is these new and emerging markets that are showing up and even in some of the mainstream farm publications, they're encouraging because of the low profitability in corn and beans in the last few years is start looking at what are some emerging markets? How can you integrate a short seasoned crop into your rotation even if it's only on a portion of your acres to create this opportunity to do this? Maybe it's growing small grain for seed, for a local seed house, maybe it's growing a canning crop, maybe it's field peas, maybe it's something else. But it's going to create that opportunity, it's going to build diversity into your system, and you're going to be able to build that plant diversity in.

Kent Solberg (20:17):

Maybe it's providing a forage crop for a dairy, or maybe it's building a full season cover crop into that rotation to custom graze somebody else's animals for 60 or 70 or 80 days out of the year. Lots of ways to do this. We just got to think it through in the context of that field and that operation.

John Mesko (20:37):

Well, and certainly creativity is enhanced when we can see examples of what other people are doing.

Kent Solberg (20:43):

Absolutely, absolutely, and we're seeing more all the time.

John Mesko (20:46):

Yeah, and I know that's a big part of your work historically and the things we're doing now, both with Sustainable Farming Association and Understanding Ag. Trying to build those networks, trying to increase that shared learning. It's something that we try to do at Soil Health Partnership, as well. There is no substitute for that, and as we've said many times, farming this way is not cookie cutter, it's not a recipe, it really involves everybody thinking kind of independently about their operation specifically.

Kent Solberg (21:16):

And, for many people, that becomes exciting. I've had a number of older producers in their 60s and even their 70s say, “This makes farming fun again. I'm excited about farming. I wish it was 30 years old.” But talk about opportunity for that next generation, talk about opportunity to pass the farm legacy on to that next generation. It's absolutely huge, and the creativity is just, it's mind boggling. I'm routinely getting calls, John, from farmers who are like, “Hey, do you know anybody who's doing such and such or so and so?” And the spectrum is so vast on different things we can do and how we can do it that, for a lot of farmers, it just means setting aside a little bit of acreage to try something new, and we really encourage farms to be their own R&D because it's going.

Kent Solberg (22:11):

All of these different things are going to be specific not only to your farm, but a particular field. And so there's things you can try on a small acreage. Big corporations, on average, set aside 4% of their gross proceeds for R&D. How many farms are we setting aside our gross, 4% of our gross proceeds for R&D? On a 1000-acre operation, 40 acres, are we willing to do that? If that's too much for you, how about 10 acres or five acres? Think about what you're willing to commit to, that you're willing to try something new and different on and you can still sleep at night. Don't risk the farm on this stuff. Be creative, but be smart. Now we have some innovators out there who are ready to dive in with both feet, but a lot of people aren't comfortable with that. I totally get that. And so we encourage people to think about what you can do and still get to sleep at night.

Kent Solberg (23:10):

I mean, for some people, it might just be shutting off the sprayer or the fertilizer spreader o, if you've got access to a 20- or 30-foot drill, do a single strip of cover crops with that. What interests you, what do you want to try? Poke around on the internet, talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors. I mean, one of the most powerful tools being used right now in networking for farmers and soil health is Twitter because it's small little stuff. Get on some of these Twitter groups, get on some of these blog sites, chat sites, whatever. There's so much going on from the cab of the tractor with a pocket cellular device right now and sharing of information – find out what others are doing, but think it through.

Kent Solberg (23:58):

Think it through in the context of these principles, think it through in the context of your soils, your farm, and especially think about it in the context of what the herbicide history's been on that field. That's very important. We've got to know that. We've seen way too many train wrecks from not paying attention to herbicide carryover and labor rotation restrictions. And so, if we do our homework, if we're thoughtful, we could take a lot of the risk out, try it and then do some side-by-sides. But don't just look at yield, don't just look at weed pressure, go out there with a shovel, dig around. How many earthworms are you're finding? What does that soil look like? Is it still platy or is it starting to build aggregation?

Kent Solberg (24:40):

Learn how to do a simple ring infiltrometer. If you can't find it on YouTube, call your NRCS office. A lot of them have soil health kits that you can go out and build a baseline. Just don't build a baseline against another field you're farming. Go into that road ditch, that tree grove, that CRP field, benchmark it against something else and learn. Learn from what you're doing, but do it in a context that's acceptable risk to you. And you're probably not going to do this on your rented acres. Do it on your deeded acres, on your home acres. So you can just step out the back door and see it. No use doing it on rented ground, that's 30 miles away or whatever.

Kent Solberg (25:20):

I think we can be thoughtful and reasonable about this – it doesn't have to be all or nothing. But there's so many creative ways, like you said, John, and how we could begin implementing this on our farm. Do a little research, think it through, what are you doing on those rainy days and those stormy winter nights? Boy, what a great time instead of watching Netflix. There's never been more information available. You know, if there's one thing COVID has done, John, it's dumped a plethora of information on soil health, on practices farmers are doing, on things farmers are using and trying, on webinars, workshops, podcasts like this one. People could spend... You can't even keep up anymore. It's just a tsunami of information. But the beauty of that is, is you can do a lot of research and never have to leave the farm and possibly never even the cab of the tractor or the combine.

John Mesko (26:11):

Yeah, I agree. And it's never been a more exciting time in my career in agriculture. Really, this is, as you said, the tools that we have to communicate and learn, the understanding that we have around soil as a biological entity that is to be worked with and not mastered, so to speak, really is an exciting thing and you touched on something that I want to get back to a little bit here and that is the next generation and the opportunity to leverage some of the things we're learning to expand the opportunities for the next generation, whether that's a farmer's own children or a neighbors' children or extended relatives of some kind. And also I'd like to hear your thoughts a little bit on the connection between a vertical integration or an additional enterprise, like livestock grazing and how that might tie into creating an opportunity for farmers to bring another generation in.

Kent Solberg (27:15):

Yeah, great questions and huge questions for our time. A lot of farms have been struggling for the last 10, 15 years here as you know John with, “What do I do? I'm getting up there in age, I don't know that I'm going to do this much longer. Gosh, I got a nephew, niece, son, cousin, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter.” Actually, it's a lot of grandchildren now that they're considering transitioning the farm to.

Kent Solberg (27:40):

That's where that's occurring, is between grandparent and grandchildren, and they're looking at the balance sheet, and they're looking at the costs of production, and they're looking at profitability – or oftentimes lack thereof – and they're like, “Man, I just can't see a way to make it happen.” And yet, we're finding time and time again with producers who are implementing the principles of soil health within the context of their operation, their net per acre or net per bushel or net per cow is going up and when that happens, they see opportunity to do this.

Kent Solberg (28:13):

Another way that they're looking at this is like, okay, I'm up to doing the corn and beans, I’m maybe up to doing a small grain but to integrate cattle or sheep or something like that into this operation, to do a full season cover, I don't have a market for this, I don't have a market in my area to do a perennial hay seeding for a couple of years as part of a rotation. I'm really not interested in getting in that chute anymore with that 800-pound steer. I totally get that. I've been banged around enough myself and a few trips to the emergency room, and I totally get that. But there's a lot of young people out there who really, really want to get into agriculture and if we can create some hope and opportunity through this for them, it's very powerful and can be very powerful.

Kent Solberg (29:06):

And a lot of farms are finding that, if my net profitability goes up, when I'm back in retirement age and we want to spend more time with the grandkids and maybe see a little bit of the country and do some more, gee, it'd be nice to farm less acres too, and so this creates that opportunity also. But you brought up the vertical integration piece or stacking, in other words, finding compatible enterprises that fits and that's where the soil health principle of integrating livestock comes in, and we kind of touched on that already with Dwayne Beck's information about adding that cereal to the rotation or some other short season crop.

Kent Solberg (29:44):

That young person isn't going to probably walk in with hundreds of cattle. They might walk in with 50 or 20 because they've been working and saving and maybe are eligible for some of the beginning farmer/rancher loans and things like that. Great place to start, great place to bring that principle of integrating livestock into the operation. It's their responsibility, and I'd encourage people set it up as a business partnership and treat it as a true business partnership where both sides have stated responsibilities. What's it going to cost, who's paying for what, who's responsible for what, get that clearly spelled out. Treat it like any other business relationship.

Kent Solberg (30:25):

There's some great information online as to how to do that. Some good examples online as to how to do that. But it's a way to do it. It's a way to cut back on your workload. It's also a way to free up some more time for you to pursue other interests at this stage in life and create an opportunity for them to build their way into the operation. Just super powerful. And it doesn't even have to be their livestock. It could be a custom graze thing, and yes, custom grazing is a real thing, and I know people who do it and do it very, very well. In fact, a lot of custom grazers almost do a better job with animal performance on those animals than the people who own them would do if they were at home because they're so stretched.

Kent Solberg (31:10):

They got so many other plates they're trying to keep spinning in the air. You can't do it all. There's only so many hours in the day. And if you're a livestock producer, and you can keep those animals grazing. Oftentimes, it's way cheaper than keeping them in the lot. There's an article in Progressive Forage magazine here about a year ago that said, just on dairy replacement heifers, we have the potential to save 35 to 50% of the cost to rearing those heifers if we can keep them out grazing. Now everybody's costs are going to be different, that's why it's a range. But there may be an opportunity there where you don't even have to own them, maybe that young person's responsible for running it, maybe somebody else is responsible for running it, but you get that livestock integration out there.

Kent Solberg (31:54):

You create other opportunities. You build community by doing this because now you're working with others, and you're helping repopulate that community with young families with young people who are going to go to the hardware store and go to the grocery store and fill those seats in the schools and the churches and in the civic groups that all need to be taken care of. So, yeah, huge opportunity here that can be addressed with just a few changes.

John Mesko (32:24):

Yeah, and I think it's interesting to think about custom grazing specifically about getting paid to have other people's cattle on your farm, getting some cash payment for that, but then also getting the benefits to the soil. Having that peace, that principle employed in building the soil health, which, as we've said, is maybe challenging to measure in a short period of time. But I think everybody understands that over the long period of time, that can be very, very profitable.

Kent Solberg (32:55):

We're actually seeing now more data, John – and I saw some vivid examples of this, this summer – that the quickest way that we can transform soil health is a diverse complex cover crop, specifically for grazing and then systematically and thoughtfully running the animals across that cover crop. It's so powerful and we've got data sets now that show adjoining farms – similar soil types, but different management – out there and several of the farms will be doing one or two of what we consider soil health practices. No till, reduce synthetic use, maybe diverse crop rotation, maybe dabbling a little in complex covers or just cover crops, just single species cover crops.

Kent Solberg (33:45):

But until we really implement all the principles of soil health, particularly increasing plant diversity in that field and in integrating livestock, we really don't see the dramatic bumps in plant available nutrients, in the amount of nutrition going down to feed that soil biology in the populations not only diversity, but total biomass of soil biology in that soil, and then ultimately soil aggregation and the ability of that soil to cycle nutrients and handle water, particularly in some of the large rain events that we've seen in the last few years. The ability to do that really doesn't show up until we reach a point where we either plateau or it just takes a lot longer if we just dabble a little bit.

Kent Solberg (34:33):

Now, I'm not saying this that everybody runs out does everything right now. I'm just saying that it's something to move towards and shoot to or shoot for and the sooner we move in that direction, the bigger results you're going to see, the bigger the benefits, the bigger the return on investment, and the greater the opportunities and you will start seeing opportunities. Producers who start down this path start seeing so many opportunities, and oftentimes, as we're consulting with them, we almost have to encourage a few of them to pull in the reins a little bit or tap the brakes a little bit for moving forward. You don't want to overrun your headlights here. There's a learning curve, and if we throw too much out there too soon, you can, to use the analogy overrunning your headlights, you could do that, you don't know what's doing what and some people are willing to do that. That's just how they're wired.

Kent Solberg (35:26):

But for a lot of us, we're a little more thoughtful, a little more careful in how we advance things, and there's just so many good resources out there to help people incrementally take that next step, move forward, see some progress, monitor some progress, and then what can we build on to take it to the next level?

John Mesko (35:45):

Absolutely, and this conversation is full of all kinds of tentacles, right? I mean, we're talking about soil health, and we're talking about improving outcomes for farmers for sure. That's the bottom line. But we're also talking about improving the environment and water holding capacity and nutrient cycling in soils which has ecosystem services implications for the broader community, right? We haven't even touched on that, and there's a ton of work going on about that as we've had on this podcast before.

John Mesko (36:19):

We're touching on the individual farm, socio-economic future with the opportunity to expand involvement and have more people on the farm. We've talked about farmer well-being, farmer support. We've talked about rural community enhancement, as you were saying, getting people back into rural communities that are involved in civic groups and organizations that make a community thrive, and we're talking about feeding the world really, not just with food, but with everything that can come from a rural landscape that's healthy and thriving. And all of this rooted in a commitment to soil health, first and foremost, and I think that this is what I was trying to get at earlier when I said, there is some common theme that we can all agree on that this is a good approach where we can all, whether it's somebody adding that cereal rye grass to their crop rotation, or as you describe somebody who has an advanced cover crop system that includes livestock grazing, maybe some custom grazing and so forth with alternative enterprise stalking, and maybe some direct marketing or other markets that have brought in all the full range of that everyone starts with soil health.

Kent Solberg (37:41):

Absolutely, absolutely. There's a piece on the community portion of this, John, I'd like to touch a little on because we often talk about the value to our rural communities, but we often think of that just as an economic driver for Main Street and keeping the seats in the schools and churches and the doors open in the businesses. But there's another piece of this that I think is very important that we often don't talk about, and that's protection of public infrastructure.

Kent Solberg (38:13):

If we keep water on the landscape – and healthy soils do this – if we keep water on the landscape, now we're protecting public infrastructure. Think of how many incidences of culverts, roads, bridges, getting washed out in major rain events in the last few years. And one other thing, some of the tools we use at workshops and field days are either the ring infiltrometer or the rainfall simulator. And oftentimes, we're just measuring how much water goes in and we think a bit in terms of crop production. But how about the ability of that land just to hold that water and even with the rainfall simulator, we see how much runs off, we see how much infiltrates, we look at the quality of that water, the sediment load that's either not being, excuse me, carried or carried by that runoff. But we don't talk about what are the downstream downhill effects of that. And the downhill effects of that are, the news reports of roads washing out and bridges washing out and underpasses getting flooded and things like that.

Kent Solberg (39:24):

And it's like if we could retain more water on the landscape, 1% increase – we hear this number a lot from NRCS – so 1% increase in soil organic matter means we're going to keep another 20 to 25,000 gallons of water on the landscape. That's huge. Now let's magnify that over thousands of acres that we could do that, and what is that costing? Many of our farmers are on township boards, they're county commissioners, they play those other roles and they're constantly struggling with balancing the budget, taxation rates, push back on that, how do we keep this up. And then the disaster, if you will, strikes and that bridge gets washed out, or that road gets washed out, and that causes hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars that they may not have budgeted for. That now they've got to come up with the fix. And if we can keep that water on the landscape, that's another aspect of supporting our community that feeds into this. And so, so many bases are touched when we start working towards soil health on our farms. Individually, corporately, community wise – it's absolutely huge, like you said.

John Mesko (40:37):

Yeah, and really the end here is that farms, farming, farmers have been under attack from folks, yeah, that view what is going on on the land as harmful or potentially harmful in a number of ways and in some cases that is happening for sure. But what we're saying is that there's a potential for farmers and farms to be good for society, to be good across the board for communities and for our whole society.

Kent Solberg (41:09):

Absolutely. It could be more than just feeding the world. It could be caring for your neighbor, it could be caring for your community, it can be supporting, helping protect that infrastructure, creating opportunity for that next generation. All of those things folded into this just can and very rapidly, very, very rapidly. We saw some instances this summer of farms that became very intentional and very assertive on applying all the soil health principles, and it was so dramatic on how just 50 yards away, we could change things with different management. Same soil type, same climate – literally two sites 50 yards away – night and day difference, and the comparison was the road ditch.

Kent Solberg (41:53):

50 years of no disturbance in that road ditch and yet this field that has implemented very diverse number of plants, implemented some grazing, very diverse rotation was much better suited and capable of handling water, much less runoff, water clarity was about the same, much more biology, much more productivity, tons of biomass, above ground biomass was, we didn't even get a chance to measure that. We ran out of time. But it was dramatically different. You could see it. It was at least five or six fold. And we often think that we have to idle land in order to get these other social benefits and environmental benefits, and, boy, this was just one of many examples that demonstrated that we can be productive and profitable on our tillable, on our farmable acres, and yet provide like you said all these other services at the same time.

John Mesko (42:52):

Like many of our conversations, Kent, over the years, this is very enjoyable and rewarding. We're recording this on a Thursday, and I think if I ever have a bad Monday and struggle to get going on my workday, I'm going to listen to this back again, and be excited about what I'm doing and being excited about the people I'm working with and the impact that we're making on a big scale. I'm energized by visiting with you and appreciate the time that you've given to us on this podcast, and I sincerely hope and want to do this again sometime.

Kent Solberg (43:31):

It's a great work we're doing, John, and it's a great reason to get up in the morning. We're helping farmers, we're helping communities and forward ho, I guess.

John Mesko (43:39):

Very good. Thank you.

Kent Solberg (43:41):

Thank you.

John Mesko (43:42):

One thing I want to ask you Kent, how can people get in touch with the work that you're doing? You're kind of spread across a couple different areas of work right now. So what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and learn about some of the things that you're doing in support of soil health education?

Kent Solberg (43:57):

Yeah, you can go to the Sustainable Farming Association website, my contact information is on there as well as work we're doing there through workshops, through events, through field days, through webinars and so on. Or you can go to the Understanding Ag website there and check in on all the work. And, with both of those organizations, I have a number of colleagues I'm working with and that's expanding and growing, which is very exciting because we're just able to touch and reach more farms in the process. So either one of those websites. You can keep track of what's going on, what I'm up to and where to find me.

John Mesko (44:34):

That's great. Thank you, Kent. I appreciate the time with you this morning and we'll talk again real soon.

Kent Solberg (44:40):

Thanks, John. It's been a pleasure.