John Mesko: (00:30)
Hi, I'm John Mesko and welcome to another edition of The People of Soil Health. Today's guest is Lisa Kubik, the Soil Health Partnership field manager in eastern Iowa. In her role, she provides technical assistance to farmers in that area, helping them understand the impacts of their conservation practices and suggesting opportunities for improvement. Along with her in-laws, Lisa and her husband Alex grow corn, soybeans and alfalfa, and also have a cow calf herd. Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Kubik: (00:59)
Thanks. Thanks for having me this morning.
John Mesko: (01:02)
Yeah, it's good to talk to you. You've got an interesting story that I think would be great to hear about how you moved from growing up on a farm in Lake Mills, Iowa, all the way through school and work to join the Soil Health Partnership. Take us through that.
Lisa Kubik: (01:19)
Sure. That would be great. I grew up in the small town of Lake Mills, Iowa. My family has farmed there for...I would be the fourth generation. My family still farms there, raises corn and soybeans and has kind of gone from a conventional tillage system as I was growing up, to now they are strip-tilling and have even decided to add some cover crops this year. Kind of neat to see my family farm making some changes that way. After graduating from high school, I attended Iowa State University for agricultural business and had some minors in agronomy and animal science. After graduation, I was able to go into the retail ag sector and got to be an agronomist with farmers and make recommendations on fertilizer, chemicals and seed also. Really enjoyed getting to meet with farmers one-on-one and make improvements on their operation there.
Lisa Kubik: (02:30)
Got the opportunity to work with Land O’Lakes and their Winfield United Company, making recommendations on seed as a seed district sales manager and then found my way to SHP and got to concentrate more so on conservation practices, especially cover crops and tillage and nutrient management. Have really enjoyed kind of getting to work through all parts of agronomy and now I get to really work with the parts that I'm really passionate about, including conservation practices on the farm.
John Mesko: (03:04)
Well, that's great. And you are one of several of our staff that either are directly or indirectly connected to a working farm in your non-SHP hours, I should say. And I know that you're doing some things there where you're farming currently. Tell me a little bit about some of the soil health practices that you're implementing on your farm currently.
Lisa Kubik: (03:27)
For sure. I was able to join my husband's family's farm, that we would be the fourth generation also here farming on this ground. My father-in-law, which would be my husband's father, when he returned to the farm, they had actually been renting out the land. And so when he got started, he had one tractor and had to purchase a planter and any other equipment that he was needing. When he got started, the easiest thing for him to do was to start with no-till because he essentially needed a smaller tractor and a lot less equipment in general. He's been no-tilling since he got started quite a while back. And since then, we've added strip-till before corn to get nutrients where they're needed in a timely manner. The last three years we've added cover crops and we also split apply our nitrogen to make sure that it gets to the plant when needed and we're not losing that throughout the season. We're adding things slowly and hopefully doing as many good things as we can.
John Mesko: (04:44)
Well, it's very interesting. I have done some rotational grazing in the past myself when I was farming and I know that from my own experience and so many other people's experience that when cattle get introduced to the land, whether that's cover crops or pasture or permanent pasture acres, it really doesn't matter, we see a really strong uptick in the benefits around soil health, organic matter and so forth. What kinds of things have you experienced on your farm when you implemented rotational grazing?
Lisa Kubik: (05:19)
Last year was actually an opportunity for Alex and I to pick up our own piece of pasture ground and we kind of fell into rotational grazing. Had wanted to, and had intended to do some rotational grazing to start with. And then as spring came, we hadn't had any chance to work on fence and so we found a part of the pasture that had some good solid fence and did some work and started by sectioning that part of the pasture off to just get cows on pasture. And as we went, we continued to split off this piece of pasture and moved the cows around and now we have six paddocks in this one specific pasture and an entire rotational grazing system setup. That's been quite the learning experience and really neat to see how the cows really benefit from new, fresh feed once a week.
Lisa Kubik: (06:19)
You really see how the grass benefits. When the grass has a five-week rest period, you can really see how that grass comes back. It's lusher, it's greener. And when the plants, when that grass is doing well, you can really tell that the soil and the whole ecosystem is doing better. It's pretty neat to drive down the road and see how some of these pastures are well, not so neat that they're not looking as good, but then you come to our pasture and you can really see how certain areas are really recovering because they're in that third or fourth week of recovery. Really, really have some of the benefits from the plant side and really the cows too.
John Mesko: (07:07)
Yeah. I think you make a good point about looking at the health or the appearance of cattle on the land. Certainly animals and their health reflect the health of the soil.
Lisa Kubik: (07:19)
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And our cows, they've always been pretty good tempermented and pretty well behaved, but when they see us and they know that new feed is coming, they come running and bellowing and are excited to see us every time, which is really fun too.
John Mesko: (07:39)
Yeah. And I think too, when the pasture is lush and you've had, like you said, some of that recovery and you had a few cycles where now the growth of the pasture is much thicker and more dense, each mouthful that the cow eats, it's got more nutrition in it so they're eating and getting full faster and cycling through their eating and rest and eating and rest. They're actually, in my experience, gaining much faster in that system than they would maybe on just a permanent pasture or another type of feeding system.
Lisa Kubik: (08:14)
For sure. Yeah. You definitely see the cows being much more efficient in how they feed. And honestly, they don't spend as much time grazing because they are getting fuller and they are just meeting their nutrient requirements so much quicker.
John Mesko: (08:33)
Now in your SHP life, in your role that you work with farmers in the field, what are some things you've learned about soil health in that realm? As you've worked with the number of folks that you do, what are they teaching you? What are you seeing in their fields?
Lisa Kubik: (08:50)
Honestly, working with SHP, I learn as much from my farmers that I work with as they probably learn from me, which is really unique and really neat. Some of the biggest things that I've learned is that there are so many ways to do soil health and improve your conservation on your farm. And there's really no right way to do it. All depends on your current way of operations, how you manage your system. Being open minded and being flexible is really part of the most important thing of increasing conservation and increasing the soil health on your farm.
John Mesko: (09:33)
Well, I know that one of the farms you work with is Zylstra Farms, Roger and Wes, they're in central Iowa. And they've been with SHP since 2015 and are actually featured in our newest business case. This idea of us putting together business cases on specific farms that we work with is something that's really helped people to understand some of what you're talking about, that there's no hard and fast, right or wrong way to cookie cutter the implementation of these practices. But the business case gives people a chance to see how one farm did it, or how somebody else in...maybe in their neighborhood or in a similar situation is doing it. Tell me a little bit about the Zylstras and their operation.
Lisa Kubik: (10:20)
The Zylstras consist of Roger and Wes. Roger is the father and Wes is the son that has come back and joined the operation. They are farming right around 700 acres along with, they also have partners that farm with them that kind of allow them to get the planting and the harvesting and all of the really busy time operations on their farms to get them done quickly. They farm primarily corn and soybeans and they also raise hogs. They're quite the operation and probably one of the best examples of being flexible and kind of changing your operation based on what your labor needs are, your equipment needs and all of the different elements that come into play. They've been super flexible and really willing to change things as they see improvements on the farm.
John Mesko: (11:19)
And tell me a little bit about their SHP trial. I've been there a couple times to see that field and I've been impressed with how things have changed there. That field, contrary to what maybe a lot of people would think about Iowa being relatively flat, that field's got quite a bit of rolling ground to it and it's kind of interesting to see how they've implemented their trial. Tell us the specifics of what they're doing.
Lisa Kubik: (11:43)
The Zylstras, as you had mentioned, they joined in 2015. And since then, they've had this field, like you had mentioned, it is a rollier piece of ground. Very representative of the ground that they typically farm in that part of Iowa. It's laid out in a replicated strip trial and we're comparing a cover crop versus a no cover crop. All other management on those strips is similar, is the same across the strips, but they are looking at that cover crop versus no cover crop.
John Mesko: (12:20)
All right. And throughout the history of them working with us on this, they've been a great example of a farm making incremental changes in how they implement practices. And you've been a big proponent of that. Tell us where they got started and where they're at today.
Lisa Kubik: (12:39)
When the Zylstras got started, actually the year before they joined SHP, they tried 12 acres of cover crops. Just cereal rye on 12 acres, let's see what happens. Since then, they transitioned to 100% of their soybean acres and now they're doing close to somewhere between 70 and 90% of their acres, depending on how it works out for the year. They've really transitioned their number of cover crop acres and the amount that they're looking at every year. They've also made changes to their nutrient plan. Since they have the hogs, they're using hog manure on a number of their fields, but they've also changed from a dry fertilizer system to now they're doing 100% liquid. That's all dependent on getting the nutrients where they need them, concentrating on how many nutrients they need for the year and the concentration of that.
Lisa Kubik: (13:44)
And they're seeing the value in the liquid. They've really changed that system to pretty well no-till or minimum till system and that's what's working well on their farm. When we return to the cover crops, how they apply their cover crops has also changed. They started with a broadcast application and just running a vertical till just to kind of incorporate that cover crop into the soil. Changed to a drill because they thought they could get more seed to soil contact and things like that. Now they've come back to the spreader because they can just frankly get more done and have less machinery maintenance and upkeep because of that. They've really changed based on their labor and the kind of equipment that they have available and what works on their operation.
John Mesko: (14:40)
In talking with Roger and Wes earlier this summer, when I was down there, that that was one of the things that came through to me as well, is that they're not saying, "We can't do it because of this reason or labor or equipment." They're looking for ways to implement conservation practices with what they have and working within their restrictions, or their boundaries, I guess you'd say, to accomplish some of these things. And I think that's a great example for people who are just thinking about getting started.
Lisa Kubik: (15:14)
Oh yes, oh yes. There can be a lot of barriers, but you have to kind of look at, how is it going to fit in my operation? How can we make this the most efficient and simple way to incorporate a cover crop, to reduce one tillage pass, to incorporate all of these different practices? How can we make it simple to fit in what you currently are doing?
John Mesko: (15:37)
One of the things that most of our farmers that we work with, especially those that have been with us as long as they have been, identify several other tangible things that have been happening on their farms around, might be microbial activity, or soil structure. What kinds of things do they see happening? And what have they reported to you? And then how are they arriving at those conclusions? What kind of data are you collecting on their trial?
Lisa Kubik: (16:05)
If you ask Roger, one of the biggest things and the first things that he'll bring up to you is that their soil structure itself has changed. Is that based off of a soil sample? It could be. We aren't necessarily seeing a change in aggregate stability that we're measuring on that field, but when it comes to him running the planter, a piece of tillage equipment, a combine through that field, he's actually seeing an improvement that he's getting into the field a day, a day and a half, maybe even two days earlier than a neighbor that might be doing an intensive tillage practice. They see that, honestly, as one of the biggest benefits as we see just less in-field time to get planting and harvest and spraying and all of those operations done. They really see the benefit of just a better soil structure in their fields.
Lisa Kubik: (17:08)
Another thing that they're seeing is increased microbial activity. Now that's a measurement that we're actually seeing a change in their soil samples that we're taking on their trial. Definitely seeing that and they're doing some other things as far as adding some microbial products, as well as micronutrients to kind of target some of those microbes and make sure that we're improving them within their soils.
John Mesko: (17:36)
Well, I think it's great. And they've been a great example of somebody who has, like you said, started several years ago, have gone through several iterations, several changes, several ideas about how they can do things better and now they're starting to see the results. Talking with Roger as I've been down there a couple times, he's very open about the importance of cover crops. And really the last time I talked with him, he said something along the lines of, "I would do this regardless of what the situation was or what the conditions were." There's just no question, he's going to use cover crops and he's going to implement various practices.
Lisa Kubik: (18:18)
Oh yes. Oh yes. Seeing the improvements in their soil structure, their microbes and he's even mentioned the improvements in water quality. I don't know that we've necessarily measured something like that, but he definitely sees the importance of us utilizing cover crops to make sure that we're improving our water quality downstream also.
John Mesko: (18:42)
Especially in the topography that he's in. That ground's fairly rolling and there's a fair amount of water right there near the plot as well.
Lisa Kubik: (18:51)
Oh, for sure. Yep. And they are in an important watershed and here in the state of Iowa, we do have the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy that we are concentrating on. Making sure that farmers are doing the right thing to make sure that our water stays in good quality and that we're keeping as many nutrients and things on the land and utilizing that for our crops and not making that to the water supply.
John Mesko: (19:20)
That's another reason why Roger and Wes's farm and your work there, as well as the business case that we've done, are so helpful to this discussion and such an important part of what we're doing at SHP. I really want to thank you for your work with them in helping them continue their learning journey as they navigate some of these things that pop up from time-to-time.
Lisa Kubik: (19:45)
Yes. They've been great to work with. And like I mentioned at the beginning, I think I've learned just as much from them as they have from me. It's great working with some of our SHP farmers.
John Mesko: (19:58)
And for everybody listening, if they want to learn more about Roger and Wes Zylstra's farm and how they're using cover crops as part of a nutrient management strategy, they can visit soilhealthpartnership.org/zylstra and that's Z-Y-L-S-T-R-A – soilhealthpartnership.org/zylstra. Or you can click the link in the show notes. With that, Lisa, thank you for your time today. Thank you also for all that you're doing for SHP there in eastern part of Iowa and appreciate the opportunity to visit with you.
Lisa Kubik: (20:34)
Thank you so much. Yeah, I really appreciate working with SHP and glad to connect with anybody that has questions on some of the farming practices and some of the conservation practices we're doing here in Iowa also.
