John Mesko: (00:30)
Hi, I'm John Mesko, and welcome to another episode of The People of Soil Health. Today, we're talking to one of our Soil Health Partnership farmer partners, Jason Lay, who lives near Bloomington, Illinois in McLean County. Jason has been farming full time since 2003, raising corn and soybeans in an area that brings unique opportunities and challenges in farming. Jason, welcome to the podcast.
Jason Lay: (00:56)
Thanks, John. How are you?
John Mesko: (00:59)
I'm doing great. I appreciate you being here. It's good to hear always from one of our farmers that are partnering with us in this work, and I'm really excited to learn more about what you're doing there on your farm. Tell us a little bit about your farming operation.
Jason Lay: (01:14)
Sure. So I farm right in central Illinois. It's right where all the interstates come together – 74, 55, 39 – Bloomington-Normal. I'm on the west side of town, farm about 2,650 acres, primarily corn, soybeans and cover crops. My 17-year-old daughter has a little bit of a sweet corn business that she runs in the summer and just sells right out of our front yard. So been doing this, like you said, since about 2003, and it seems like I'm trying to learn more each and every year.
John Mesko: (01:45)
Well, that's great. And I have to tell you that even though, as we were talking earlier, I'm located in Minneapolis, I spent many years in the heart of the Corn Belt. I worked as an agronomist in central Illinois for a few years, and I'm familiar with that area. And I'll tell you what, those of us that have been on the fringe of the Corn Belt are pretty envious of the soil that you got at your disposal there in Bloomington. That's as good as it comes.
Jason Lay: (02:13)
That's what I've been told. And like you, I've traveled a little bit. So prior to coming back to the farm, I was in four different states with different companies. So I'd seen a lot of the Corn Belt, primarily Kansas, Nebraska, different parts of Illinois. And you're exactly right, this is about as good as it gets. But with that, that doesn't mean that you can be complacent and take things for granted.
John Mesko: (02:37)
Well, yeah. And that's kind of one of the things I wanted to ask you about. We get a lot of interest from folks who want to be a part of our partnership because they see a need to improve their soil or, like we were saying earlier, they live in an area where they need that. Tell me what motivated you to join the Soil Health Partnership and focus on that for your farm.
Jason Lay: (03:01)
Sure. So I guess first and foremost, I'll just start it off by saying this isn't our grandfather's farm anymore. It's not cows and plows. We're a lot more complex. We've got a lot more technology. We’ve got a lot more tools at our disposal. And with that said, our consumers are a lot more educated as well. So we not only need to be telling our story and doing the right thing and being sustainable and doing a lot of things to make sure that we're leaving the ground in a lot better place than where we found it. So that's really ultimately what intrigued me the most to get involved and just to develop a vision and quantify how I can go about improving soil health.
John Mesko: (03:38)
It's interesting and exciting to hear you use the word vision. I've shared on the podcast here with other guests that, in the last 20 or 30 years, the focus of what we can do with our soils has changed to where I think more and more people realize that we don't have to just keep the status quo, we can improve things as we go.
Jason Lay: (04:02)
That's most definitely the case. It's sort of astonishing really when you sit back and think about it. Fifteen years ago, we didn't have all this, I guess, access to information and technology and analysis. We're getting a lot of these tools to help us analyze and quantify what we're doing and how it's changing things. It just really gets me excited. It's a lot of fun to be a part of, it's a lot of fun to learn and actually see some change and experience the change and know that you're doing the right thing too.
John Mesko: (04:30)
Yeah. I agree with you completely. Now, one of the things that you mentioned that you're just outside of Bloomington there in Illinois. How close are you to town? What kinds of additional challenges does farming in that area, your focus on soil health, how does that work together?
Jason Lay: (04:48)
Bloomington-Normal's probably 150,000 people, blessed with a very white-collar working force. We have two major universities. Overall, it's a very educated population. I'd say that's probably our biggest challenge – of course, other than traffic. But with COVID this year, that sort of disappeared, so it's nice and also sort of eerie this spring, going out with the planter tractor, and some other stuff throughout the spring and just not seeing cars go by for hours upon hours. With that many people, you've got to have resources. And one of the most important ones is water. I'm not directly in the Lake Bloomington watershed, which is where the City of Bloomington gets their water, but I'm real close to it. So I'm paying real close attention to how to make sure that we're doing the right thing with our water and our water quality.
Jason Lay: (05:38)
I guess more importantly right here where I sit, I'm about four miles straight west. Luckily there's an interstate between and town, so we don't have a lot of houses out this way, but we do have a lot of traffic. And just a lot of people that are curious to what we're doing, which is also an opportunity. Take a lot of pride in having a lot of different people visit the farm and just helping educate them, help them understand a lot more about what we're doing and why we're doing it. It's really been a fun time, like I said. It's a challenge, but I like to change that into an opportunity as well.
John Mesko: (06:09)
Well, I think that's fantastic. One of the things that I've seen popping up more and more here lately is the use of strip-till. I know you've been doing it for quite a while and I also know that you're doing some no-till as well. When we think about building soil, one of the key components is minimizing the disturbance of that soil. And I'm curious: how and why you go about implementing both of those practices?
Jason Lay: (06:36)
Sure. So like you had touched earlier, we're blessed with just phenomenal soils, deep black prairie soils. And because of that, it's somewhat of a challenge too, because it can hold on to nutrients too well. We have very high organic matter, very high CEC. So the way I look at it, I'm trying to get as efficient as I possibly can. So the best way to do that is, in my terms, is putting the nutrients in a band in strip-till. So I do that ahead of my corn and then after that, I plant my soybeans in the no-till. So I get the best of both worlds. But the main reason behind the strip-till is to band the nutrients and be absolutely as efficient as I can possibly get with where I put those nutrients. And I don't want that corn plant trying to search for its groceries per se. I want those right there where they're readily available and I can access them immediately.
John Mesko: (07:24)
Yeah. That's a good point. You're concentrating the nutrients where they're going to be used the most. Do you find that you're able to use a lower rate per acre on any of those nutrients or how's that working for you on the strip-till side of things?
Jason Lay: (07:39)
Yeah. So overall it's hard to quantify exactly. It's such a moving target with your soil tests, your tissue tests and what you're applying. But I would say, as a rule of thumb, it's probably about two-thirds. And more importantly, I'm saving a lot of other trips that most other folks are doing. I'm not doing all those trips. It's basically getting planted into the similar type environment or similar soil conditions, especially with corn. And it's a great program. I've had a lot of luck with it. Of course, I've had a lot of bumps and bruises trying to get into it and try to figure out exactly how to do it, the timing of such, the equipment to use and so on and so forth. So it's taken a while, but I'm a Cubs fan for a reason – it takes me a while. I keep trying.
John Mesko: (08:25)
Oh, that's a good one. I can kind of relate to you as a Minnesota Twins fan. So we're kind of in the same boat there, only once in a while do we actually see the glory there. So tell me about what's going on there on your farm with the Soil Health Partnership trial. What are you looking at there and what have you been learning?
Jason Lay: (08:48)
Yeah. So John I've been involved, I believe since 2015 – don't hold me to that, but that'd be pretty close. And the way we set it up, it was one strip of cover and then the next strip was no cover, cover crop I should say. And then it was wrapped across the entire field. So what I'm trying to do is basically analyze, with the use of cover crops, is it changing the soil health of that field relative to what would have been my more conventional practices or my traditional practices would be a better way to put that. Yeah, so all the other practices, whether it be the herbicide treatment, the hybrid or variety, the population, the fertilizer applications, all that remains the same. The only variable that I'm changing is this strips of cover crops as compared to those strips that never get cover crops.
John Mesko: (09:42)
And when you say cover crops, what it that? Define that for us, right, because cover crops are different on every farm. I'm assuming it's cereal rye.
Jason Lay: (09:50)
Yeah, so I've tried a number of different things, not only in this particular plot, but across my own acreage as well. And I'd say more often than not, it's typically into corn stalks, which that following spring would be planted into soybeans, I plant cereal rye. And then this year, for example, I had soybean stubble. So I used barley, I've used some clover. I've used all kinds of different covers. Still trying to figure out what the best one is for being stubble, it's going into corn. It seems to be a little bit more of a challenge for me, not only from the seeding time, but getting it established and then also not having any sort of negative impact on the corn crop the following year.
John Mesko: (10:32)
Yeah. That's a challenge and it's a challenge for everybody that's implementing this, whether it's in the South or in the North or in the middle of the Corn Belt, everybody's trying to deal with this. And as I travel about, nobody thinks they have a long enough growing season to do all this. It doesn't really matter where we're at. Everybody would like to have more time to be able to get that seed out there and get that cover crop established. But it sounds like you've had a good experience with it. Tell me a little bit about how the data is helping you. How do you benefit or do you benefit, I guess I should say, and then how does the data you're getting off of that Soil Health Partnership trial, how does that help you in making decisions?
Jason Lay: (11:17)
I know going into this, that it was intended to be a very long-term study and I'm still looking at that as such. So I don't get involved in trying to get into the details each and every year, but I look at it each and every year, of course. I really think the true value of it is how analytical the tools that they are using, the different metrics that they are using. And then I like to compare those to other people that are in the group. So it's just the power of being with your peers and trying to understand what they're doing. Obviously, of course, I'm trying to implement a lot of these other practices into the rest of my operation. So I've used it both ways, I guess. Part of it would be just to learn what I'm doing in that particular plot, but also how to apply it with the help of others in the group to the rest of my operation.
John Mesko: (12:07)
Yeah. You make a good point there in thinking through how being a part of this trial, you're able to interact with other farmers who are doing some similar things, maybe in some different geographies or a little bit different soil type, or maybe they're using a different type of cover crop or different equipment or whatever the case may be. But in your area, in your geography there in that deep rich soil, just west of Bloomington, what kinds of interests, if any, are you getting from other farmers in that area or are you finding people are skeptical or are they interested in learning about the kinds of things you're doing there or is that whole perspective changing, do you think over time?
Jason Lay: (12:48)
It's continuing to evolve. So at first, it was more, I was definitely the outlier in the area. And I say as it gets more media publication, you read about it more in winters, you see more seminars throughout the Corn Belt talking about it. You hear different landlords talking about it. You hear different universities talking about it. It's starting to catch a lot more attention of growers. And there's a lot more guys that are dabbling with it and trying to figure out how to make it a part of their program, how to adapt their equipment, how to adapt their crop rotations, how to adapt their relative maturities of their planting so they could tighten up the windows, get stuff planted a little bit quicker and get it established better in the fall, so then they get more benefits from it.
Jason Lay: (13:34)
But I think it's continuing to evolve, and I'm excited about where we're headed with this. And I think a lot of others are just more intrigued, I guess, more than anything and asking a lot of questions and ultimately they know as well, but it's a very competitive environment that we're in today with lower commodity prices and they've got to try to figure out how to make it work. And for some, it's maybe the answer, for others it may not, just depends on their own situation.
John Mesko: (14:00)
Well, I'm sure that you're a community benefit there helping folks at least get one perspective and a chance to understand some things. You mentioned landlords, and I'm wondering how you have seen the perspective of landlords in general, changing over the last few years. As you said, we're seeing a lot more in the press. We're seeing this discussion around soil health and cover crops go beyond Farm Journal and Progressive Farmer. These articles are starting to show up in the everyday newspaper. I've seen a number of stories here in the Twin Cities about just in the local paper about what farmers are doing in the area of soil health. And I'm sure you're seeing that there too. So landlords who may not be regular readers of the farm publications are probably hearing about. What kinds of conversations have you had with landlords around soil health?
Jason Lay: (14:56)
Yeah, I'll take that a little bit different direction. And most of my landlords are fairly well established with me as an operator. Most of them have been with us for a number of years, and they've seen the value of land go from $3,000 to $15,000-16,000, and now it's sort of settled back around that 11 to 12. And a lot of them have said simply, "I can't afford to go out and buy more ground. How can we make what I have better?"
Jason Lay: (15:22)
And I use that as an opportunity to help them understand more about what I'm doing. And ultimately, a lot of those landlords, they want to pass the ground down to their children and hopefully to their grandchildren and so on and so forth, who also want to see it being left in a better place. And having that soil health be just a main focal point around what their farm is and what it means to their family, it's really a great opportunity. And I have a lot of people that I have that conversation with and like you had said, they see the information out there and they really are excited that someone that's farming for them is doing it firsthand. So I greatly welcome that conversation. It's been a lot of fun how it's changed over the years. At first, obviously some of them were fairly skeptical, but as they get into it, they get pretty excited about it.
John Mesko: (16:11)
Well, I think it's going to be continued growth in that area of interest. Based on the kinds of questions we get through our organization, the kinds of work that some of our partners are doing to help communicate with landlords. And I think you hit it right on the head, this all goes back to the value of the land. And just like any asset, it's a good idea to try to, at the very least, maintain that value. And if you can improve the value by taking care of it or investing in it in some way, it's beneficial and it's no different with land.
Jason Lay: (16:48)
Very true.
John Mesko: (16:49)
So in thinking about how your operation and your practices have evolved over the years, we talked about strip-till and no-till, cover crops, we talked about managing your nutrient applications to be in that strip. What are some of the difficulties you've overcome or maybe key lessons you've learned, key takeaways that if you had to do over again, you wish you'd have known right away or someone else could have told you about?
Jason Lay: (17:21)
John, how long did you say we have here?
John Mesko: (17:26)
Maybe just one, right?
Jason Lay: (17:29)
I'll take that. I'll be quite honest with you. The first steps by far are the most difficult. And that's just part of our human behavior, especially when you're a farmer. You don't want to be different. You don't want to look any different than your neighbor. Changing is very difficult, especially when you're trying to do this, because it may evolve into a number of different things, whether you've got a whole other team of advisors that you're counting for information on, you've got to change equipment. That may require you to change equipment vendors or equipment dealers.
Jason Lay: (18:07)
So first and foremost, it's that first step. It's just hard to take. And what I've learned from it, like I said, I could take that a multitude of different directions, but you've just got to take it and you've got to commit to it, and you've got to have a vision and you've got to reach out to those that are doing it to help you along the way. And once you get into it and once you get more comfortable and start to lick your wounds a little bit, then it starts to get fun and then you start to learn from it.
John Mesko: (18:36)
You're talking about the entrepreneurial approach to the farming business and frankly, that's increasingly a new approach. I know that back in the day, when we talked about there was a narrative in farm country, which was to expand whether it's livestock or crops. The key goal is to expand and well, we did that over a whole generation of farming. And now, folks like you, Jason, leading the way with us, really helping to understand that you can only get so big and at some point you have to look at ways to be efficient and to manage what you have for efficiency and effective returns that way. And so I think you're identifying with the new wave maybe of how we're going to continue to grow in agriculture.
Jason Lay: (19:32)
Yeah. I use a very simple motto: do more with less. Playing sports as a kid and I still apply that each and every day to my farming operation. It's so simple, but yet it's so true. Why do you need to make your life any more complex than it already is? I have to wear, I don't know how many hats, throughout the course of the year and I needed to learn how to do more with less.
John Mesko: (19:55)
Well, on that point, I think that's a great way to wrap things up. Doing more with less is a great way to think about some of the things that you're doing, but also some of things we're doing at Soil Health Partnership to really help folks understand what they can do with the soil that's available to them. So Jason, with that, I thank you tremendously for joining us on the call today, but also for your work as a partner with the Soil Health Partnership and the work that you're doing on your farm. I'm looking forward to learning more from your work as it relates to soil health and the rest of the community as well. So thank you.
Jason Lay: (20:33)
Greatly appreciate it, John. Thank you very much.
