Podcast Episode

John Mesko (00:24):
Hi, I'm John Mesko and welcome to another episode of The People of Soil Health. Today's guest is Darrick Steen, who serves as the Director of Environmental Programs for Missouri Soybean and Missouri Corn. He has some livestock on his farm as well and I hope we get to learn a little bit about that. Darrick, welcome to the podcast.

Darrick Steen (00:50):
Yeah, welcome John. I'm going to enjoy this this morning, having a chance to talk to you.

John Mesko (00:55):
Oh same here. I know that you and I met about a year ago for the first time at one of the core grower meetings, we had a great conversation and I'm looking forward to learning more about the things going on in Missouri. Tell me though, one of the things that we like to do on this podcast is try to learn about how people who are into the soil health world and doing good things in promoting soil health and sustainability, how those folks got into that, so I'm curious: as a graduate of the University of Missouri with a degree in agricultural engineering, how did you get to where you're at now?

Darrick Steen (01:37):
Well, John, it's actually quite a long story and I'm actually going to go back further than really my college time. It actually started with turkeys, believe it or not, and as well as a bit of politics. I grew up on a turkey farm (my dad still turkey farms today), we also have cattle, and so that was the environment that I grew up in. But my dad was also a politician at the state level and so as I was certainly in my high school and just as I was going into college, I had my elbows deep into both manure, as well as some political issues around agriculture because of things that my dad was involved in.

Darrick Steen (02:27):
And so those two things shaped a good amount of what I'm doing today, as well as my college degree and what I wanted to pursue. And so, yeah, really the farming experience I think probably mostly led me into engineering. When you're on a farm, there's problems that have to be solved every day. I think that problem-solving mindset is what kind of drove me into engineering and, since agriculture is what I knew as a child, that seemed like the obvious sector area for me to go in. But really the politics side is probably what's led me into the soil health, and that may seem strange, but there were some political issues around animal agriculture in the time when I was in college and those issues were at the state level, but they were things that my dad was dealing with as a state representative. And so that was front and center on my mind as well. And those issues really were around manure management and environmental quality issues with the animal production industry in Missouri, which was something that obviously I knew a lot about.

Darrick Steen (03:42):
So, needless to say, it kind of led me in more of the environmental direction with my degree and with what I wanted to do when I graduated. Over time, that led to me to working at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and specifically working in the agricultural area. Working with concentrated animal feeding operations, lots of hog farms, lots of poultry farms, and working with them around nutrient management as well as the regulatory requirements that they have to follow. And so that really probably as much gave me the stepping stone into what now is a career or a job where soil health is, and working around basically improving and maintaining our soil resources is front and center in my role here with Missouri Corn Growers. And so yeah, it's a long story. It started with turkeys and has ended with corn and soybeans, but it's all kind of been tied together in a variety of experiences along the way.

John Mesko (04:45):
Well that's a good great story there, and I'm really glad you're working in this area. We need a lot of good, creative, strong minds working to improve sustainability for agriculture, for farmers and for consumers and for our whole society, and you're doing that. And I understand some of what you're doing at Missouri Soybean and Missouri Corn in improving sustainability for farmers, while also trying to minimize government regulations on farms, and that's a challenge. And I'm curious, how do you address those two issues simultaneously?

Darrick Steen (05:27):
Well I think, since I've started here working with Missouri Corn and Soybean, I think that our number one or my number one goal has always been and will continue to just be to make sure that our members, that our growers, corn and soybean farmers, really farmers overall, that they're educated and aware of the issues and challenges in front of them. I've told groups time and time again that it's not my job to tell farmers how farm – they're the experts in that – but it is my job to make sure they're aware of issues, aware of challenges that I feel may be in front of them, whether it be a year down the road or 10 years down the road, and make sure that they're aware of the solutions that can help them overcome those challenges.

Darrick Steen (06:16):
And then at that point it's up to them to decide what's best on their farm to make sure that they're going to be able to pass that operation on to the next generation of family members that are likely already working. So, really, I think number one is just making sure our farmers are always in the know and are aware of everything around them that could potentially be a threat, but as well as the opportunities. So I think if we do that, we've covered the bases pretty well. But at the same time I think it's something that we've tried to do here is, as well as educate and raise awareness, is to devote some time in research – both research that we fund externally, as well as some work that we do internally.

Darrick Steen (07:07):
And some of that work that I'm doing – I know we'll talk a little bit about more – but yeah, we try and focus some research on things that are impactful, that are meaningful, and that are practical on farm and ready to utilize immediately, the results. I think that speaks well and is received well by farmers when we can do things that they can apply on their farm immediately instead of having to wait years and years down the road for a report if you will, so those things.

Darrick Steen (07:40):
And then thirdly I'd say that it's been a goal of ours to increase our collaboration and partnership with other organizations here at Missouri Corn and Soybean. And that was something that was relatively easy for me to do just because of my previous jobs and employment with Missouri DNR. I didn't have any choice – as a government official, I had to work with a variety of groups, some that I saw eye-to-eye with and some of them that I probably didn't. But I had a lot of working relationships that I could tie into here and bring those to the table, and so we've done that. And so we're working with a lot of different groups, some that are agricultural and some that probably fall more in the wildlife conservation arena, and maybe even environmental conservation arenas. And so those partnerships I think as well have helped with our objective of both minimizing government regulations, as well as improving sustainability because I think all of those groups have a stake in that too.

John Mesko (08:47):
Yeah, I commend your work, there's so many good things going on in a lot of various states that we work with at Soil Health Partnership where farmers are addressing their own concerns. So farmers are taking a look at how they can take action and create a sustainable production model, not only for their own farm, but for the farming community in general, and address some of these issues without the need to be influenced by government regulations. And I think the program you're referring to earlier in your comments was, I think you guys call it the Missouri Strip Trial Program and, if that's what you're thinking of, tell us a little bit about it. How many farmers are in it, and how is it impacting management practices there in Missouri?

Darrick Steen (09:37):
Sure, yeah, that's one of the two big projects that we're involved with here. Yeah, so the Missouri Strip Trial Program really started out of a regulatory issue. When I was working with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, particularly the last couple of years during that career, I was the designated representative for the State of Missouri if you will, on the Gulf Hypoxia Taskforce. The Hypoxia Taskforce is a group of mostly government officials at the state and federal level that are working to try and reduce the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which has been a challenge and an issue for quite some time. So at the time that I was there, there was an initiative or directive for states to develop what's known as a nutrient loss reduction strategy.

Darrick Steen (10:41):
So each state was asked to prepare and develop a state-specific strategy to reduce nutrients to the Gulf of Mexico. And right about the time that that was being written here in Missouri with my transition from working for DNR to becoming sort of a contract environmental employee, and was working with Missouri Corn Growers and other agricultural groups here in Missouri on the private sector side. And I was kind of asked or tasked with helping write that for Missouri. And so we were trying to develop some ideas and some programs that really would focus around nutrient management and cover. And ways we could more involve growers into trying some different practices out in a low risk sort of manner.

Darrick Steen (11:38):
And so the Strip Trial Program was virtually written into that strategy, it doesn't say that specifically but the parameters for which we developed that program really is written in our nutrient reduction strategy. And so that was how it really came to be. And we brought the University of Missouri into that conversation and our nutrient management and plant science specialists over at the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri was ready to go. And so we've really kind of developed that program collaboratively with MU. Over the last three, four, five years we focused that program on primarily in two main areas, and that being the application of cover crops and how to manage cover crops in corn and soybean rotations, as well as nutrient management, primarily nitrogen, and trying to dial in nitrogen rates and optimize those rates for production while reducing losses.

Darrick Steen (12:47):
So that was the impetus behind it, and it's still going strong today. We have a number of groups that support that from a financial standpoint with the University overseeing and essentially administering the program.

John Mesko (13:02):
So what kinds of learnings are you getting off of this program? What kinds of things are you sharing with the community when you're out talking about this program?

Darrick Steen (13:11):
In the area of cover crops one of the things that growers often ask or want to know, especially when this all started, before cover crops were as widespread as they are now, they needed to know what kind of impact to the yields of their cash crop were going to be seen with cover crops, good, bad, or indifferent? And so I know that question is still being worked out. There's not a definitive answer as to how cover crops can impact yield, both in the short term and the long term. But certainly one thing we did see is that there wasn't any major negative impacts to yield. And occasionally sometimes we would see some positive impact.

Darrick Steen (14:03):
So I think that was important from my perspective to ensure that growers understood that, while cover crops would come with some challenges, they weren't going to sink their yield at the end of the year on what keeps the farm going. So I think being able to demonstrate that and show that in the data and show that on farms in sort of real working conditions was important just to kind of get our growers comfortable with the idea of planting cover crops. Of course now three or four or five years later I think cover crops are... They're looked at differently now, more mainstream and certainly they approach them with less risk. So I think the program has been successful in answering questions like that around cover crops. We do other trials around termination and when the best time to terminate cover crops are, both before corn and soybean, and those are all questions that we continue to try and find the right answer to.

Darrick Steen (15:14):
On the nitrogen side, that's probably still a work in progress in my mind; we're still probably trying to answer some nitrogen related questions. The nitrogen, of course, is a whole different animal because it's just every year is different. And there are so many other parameters that impact nitrogen rates and what the best nitrogen approach is. And so that one's going to be a little more tricky I think, but getting producers to try different rates, different approaches, to nitrogen management on their corn and getting them thinking about that I think is good and helps them ultimately dial in what would be the right rate for their application.

John Mesko (16:03):
I would agree. Some of your comments really reflect the difficulty we have in assigning a specific dollar value to putting out a cover crop. You mentioned that you found it important to note that it wasn't a negative impact, and I think that's what we're finding at Soil Health Partnership too. In many cases it's a challenge to assign a specific dollar revenue change, we see cost savings as a part of implementing a diverse production model with cover crops or reduced tillage. We see those kinds of impacts, but I think the real proof will be over the long term, when we see some of these impacts take effect over many years of consistent application of these practices.

John Mesko (16:57):
But I'm curious, we are very fortunate to have your support for The Soil Health Partnership in Missouri; you serve on our Science Advisory Committee and have been active in that, and it's great to have you as part of our program in those ways. But I'm curious how the work that's going on in Missouri with The Soil Health Partnership intersects with some of the things you've been talking about?

Darrick Steen (17:20):
Well the uniqueness of the Soil Health Partnership, at least here in Missouri, is related to its focus on the science of soil health. The Strip Trial Program, certainly it interacts with the principles around soil health, but really we're looking at the application of cover crops, its impact on yield and how to fine tune the use of cover crops. The Soil Health Partnership, while cover crops are certainly a stapled practice of that program, what I like about the Soil Health Partnership is it's diving in really to the science of what's going on in the soil. I'm not a soil scientist, I don't profess to be one, I don't even try to be one. When I have soil related questions, I call your staff, right? Because they're the experts in that, and I appreciate that resource that it provides us.

Darrick Steen (18:17):
But yeah I think we got a lot of farmers that are very in tune with their soil on their farms and certainly many of them have college educations around soil science. I mean, at least the ones I work with do and so they get it. But there's a lot of questions that need to be answered around what are the parameters? What are the things in their soils, in their fields, that they need to be paying the closest attention to? You can't pay attention to everything, there's just too many variables and too many parameters when we're looking at soil health, especially if you start looking at some of those soil health analyses.

Darrick Steen (19:03):
But what are the ones that really are the most important that we would want to recommend to growers to pay attention to on a routine basis? Those are questions I know that we get, and I know that the Soil Health Partnership is trying to answer as it relates to making sure that they can maintain, and if not improve, their cash crop, their corn and soybean yields or whatever the crop is that they're growing. So that's what I appreciate about Soil Partnership is it fits in well with the things that we're doing. And while there's always a little bit of overlap on other programs, it does provide a unique perspective on the soil science side.

John Mesko (19:43):
Yeah, thank you. It's been a great partnership there in Missouri and we're looking forward to good things in the future Darrick. And in your last comments here you talked about some of the progressive farmers that you're working with who are really leading the edge on soil science and understanding soils, an area of research that is expanding so rapidly. As I've said many times, we are really, I think, just scratching the surface of what we can do with our soils.

John Mesko (20:18):
Now that we've accepted as a society and as an agriculture community, we've accepted this understanding that the soil is a living organism that is to be managed and cultivated truly rather than necessarily controlled and managed so that it can be more along the lines of what we want in terms of holding the crop or being a medium for the nutrients be stored, but really a living organism that is managed and can enhance its ability to produce over time.

John Mesko (20:54):
And I'm curious, you're one of those farmers, I mean you're one of those farmers that is on the edge of this work and understands it as well as anyone. And so tell us a little bit about your farm, I know as you mentioned you still have some turkeys and I know you've got some beef cattle as well.

Darrick Steen (21:13):
Yeah. So my grandmother, she farmed, and my grandfather passed away when I was young and I got to know him but I was still pretty young, but she stayed on the farm and really farmed until I was out of college for the most part, and until she was quite old. When I graduated and just a few years out of college, we were ready to move back to the farm. I was married, we'd already started a family, and so I bought some land from her to build a house on and I built the house right across the road from her. I took over the farm essentially when I moved on the farm and then she just kind of let me take over, and it was a good relationship we had that allowed me to sort of ease into farming and overcome some of those big financial burdens that always are in front of new young farmers.

Darrick Steen (22:12):
And then eventually I bought the farm, bought her land, and she's passed away since then, and so I've continued that heritage on my grandparents farm. And my dad's farm is adjacent to us, so we have separate operations but we obviously share labor and share equipment, we just don't share bank accounts as many can attest to I think in the business of farming. So sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t, right?

Darrick Steen (22:44):
But yeah, so just I've stuck with cattle, haven't dove into turkeys and don't plan to, I had my fill of shoveling manure as a kid and that wasn't necessarily something I wanted to make a career of, so I started with cattle. Some years it seems like it's an expensive hobby and some years it can be almost a full time job it seems like. But nonetheless I got mostly Angus cows, Angus cross cows, and all pasture-based. I've weaned calves just this last week and so I'm in a mode right now where I start my day feeding calves and I end my day feeding calves, and then I make money in between on my real job. But it keeps me grounded, it keeps me connected to agriculture, and frankly it's a stress relief, some therapy from the everyday stresses of life when I can go out and just fix fence for a few hours. That part I appreciate and it's helpful for me and also helpful just to be able to raise my family in that environment as well.

John Mesko (23:59):
Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it. I've experienced the same thing in my own life and it's been very rewarding. And also really it's interesting to hear the story of your grandmother. So many cases where there's a couple that's farming and they've maybe raised their family and things are kind of moving on. So many times when the husband passes on, that widow ends up selling the farm quickly because of either financial needs or a lack of interest, or understanding of what's going on on the farm. And I think this is a great story to tell about how your grandparents were obviously equal partners in this, that she was able to pick up and keep running it, and that she had the wherewithal and the intention to maintain that operation long enough so that it was available for you to step in. She sounds like quite a woman.

Darrick Steen (25:02):
Well she was, and she was tough and she grew up in times that were tough as well, and so she didn't have any fear of tough times or challenges. But it's all worked out and it is a good story and I'm always happy to tell that. We've got a big family, and I've got brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts that still live all around the area that I farm. And so it was important, I think, for the whole family that the farm stay in the family and be another generation of farming, so that's good as well. And probably like many in this business our experiences as kids and teenagers on the farm has done as much to shape our careers and shape what our passions are, that's certainly the case for me.

Darrick Steen (26:02):
And one of the things I tell people, especially in the regulatory realm and folks that aren't familiar with agriculture, and when they're worried that things are going the wrong way, or they're worried we're not improving fast enough, if you will, on the environmental side or on the nutrient side, I just remind people: time heals a lot of wounds. Sometimes it's generational changes that may be the biggest impact, that may have the biggest impact, right? You know as well as I do that when you get older and you get set in your ways it's harder to change, and it's harder to have a long term perspective when you don't have a long term plan on your farm, you're planning to retire if you will.

Darrick Steen (26:53):
But the younger generation, that's not the case. They're taking a long view and they're also probably better educated, and they're also probably a little more progressive when it comes to how to manage and run a farm. So I remind people that sometimes we just need to give these things time and allow that younger generation to step up, because I'm confident – just falling back on my own experiences – that that next generation will make some dramatic improvements and will continue that mindset of continuous improvement, and making improvements on the farm, that both ensure that we feed our country and feed the world as well as make our environment a better place as well.

John Mesko (27:46):
Well that is really well said, Darrick, and I think it's a great note to end our discussion on, at least for today, kind of a hopeful thought about the future. And I agree with you, I think things are looking up and I'm really excited to see the next generation coming into agriculture with a mindset of the long view, and they're in it for the long haul and they want to see things get better. And I think that's great; I think that's essential and appreciate you bringing that perspective to our discussion, and really thank you for all that you're doing down there in Missouri. We really appreciate the connection with Soil Health Partnership, and I appreciate the things you're doing just for agriculture as a whole. So thanks so much for being with us today.

Darrick Steen (28:30):
You bet, John, thanks, and here in Missouri we look forward to many years ahead with Soil [Health] Partnership and the work that we're doing here, so thank you.

John Mesko (28:38):
All right, take care.