John Mesko: (00:30)
Welcome back to the People of Soil Health podcast. It's always great when our SHP farmers are recognized for the work they do around soil health and sustainability, which is why I'm so excited to be joined today by Joshlin and Addie Yoder. Joshlin and Addie farm near Leonard, Missouri, and just a couple of weeks ago were announced as the recipients of the 2020 Missouri Leopold Conservation Award, which recognizes farmers, ranchers, and foresters who inspire others with their dedication to land, water, and wildlife management.
John Mesko: (01:05)
Joshlin and Addie, welcome to the show.
Joshlin Yoder: (01:07)
Glad to be here.
Addie Yoder: (01:08)
Thank you.
John Mesko: (01:09)
It's great to talk to you, and as we have had a number of other SHP farmers on this podcast, it's really important and exciting to hear directly from you folks that are doing the work that we're involved in on your farms and the things that are working and the things that we're learning from your work is really the foundation and the basis of what we do going forward. And so before we dig into the specifics of conservation that you're doing, tell us a little bit about your family and your farm and how it is that you came to be doing what you're doing.
Joshlin Yoder: (01:48)
So Addie and I and our four kids are farmers here in northeast Missouri, but like many people of our generation, we're a part of a larger operation that's kind of a family-based farm. My dad and my brother and I all work together. We farm about 4,500 acres of row crops and then have a beef backgrounding operation, and what's kind of unique is that even though we pool labor and resources and help each other on all of our farms, we all manage our own farms separately from one another.
Joshlin Yoder: (02:22)
So Addie and I, we have our farm that we make all the decisions on, my brother has his farm that he makes all the decisions on, and my dad has his farm that he makes all the decisions on. And we really like this. It creates challenges working with family, but it really is very enjoyable and very beneficial for all of us to be set up that way.
John Mesko: (02:41)
That sounds great. I've had a lot of work in my career with families that are going through transitions from one generation to another and situations where, like you have, where there's multiple offspring that are wanting to move into farm management. And the hurdles involved in that are monumental, as I'm sure you're aware, but the way you've got it set up sounds very interesting, that you've taken out some of the most stressful components of those relationships, that being joint ownership or finances where there's a lot of decisions to be made. And it sounds like, to have that independent decision-making really gives you a chance to focus on your operation and still maintain good family relationships.
Joshlin Yoder: (03:28)
You're right. And Addie and I didn't take a direct route back to the farm. We actually took a different path because we both attended the University of Missouri and graduated in 2002, but I went into retail for five years, following graduation from college. We moved to Alabama and lived down there for five years before kind of that desire and that love of being outdoors and being on the farm finally just kind of took back a hold of them and we made the move back to the farm.
Joshlin Yoder: (03:56)
So that was quite a leap, but one thing I can say that I can't thank my dad enough for is how easy he made that transition for us to come back to the farm, but then also how he allowed myself and my brother, when he moved back, to take ownership and to make our own decisions and with a lot of guidance for sure, but he let us have that ownership of our enterprises and our farms, so we could turn them into what we wanted them to be. And that's something that really can be a struggle for the generation that is passing on farms to the next, turning over some of that decision making and some of that responsibility can be really difficult. So I can't thank my dad enough for how easy he made that process for both my brother and I.
John Mesko: (04:41)
Well, I agree with you and sounds like your dad's actually pretty visionary in the way that he's approached that. I, unfortunately, know way too many 50-year-old farmers who still have to ask their dad permission to make even the smallest financial decisions on those farms. That's a real danger, especially when it comes time for when that older generation really needs to step aside, maybe because of an age or physical limitation of some kind, then those really critical decisions get made in a hurry and without a lot of thought and a lot of consideration, and sometimes those decisions aren't the best ones getting made.
John Mesko: (05:21)
I'm really, I'm encouraged by this story, and so I'd like to hear a little bit about your conservation practices on your farm and how you got interested in that, and specifically around the practices that you're doing to promote and secure a better soil health.
Joshlin Yoder: (05:39)
One of the big driving forces for us to move back here to northeast Missouri and to start into farming was we'd had our first child, and getting back to that rural lifestyle and being back closer to family was really, really important to us. But as our family grew, we now have three daughters and a son, this idea that the next generation, even after us, for them to be successful and have an opportunity to live the same lifestyle that we do, we had to make sure that the environment that we're working in and the soil that we're raising our crops in is going to be as productive into the future as what it is today, if not even more productive in the future.
Joshlin Yoder: (06:20)
So that was one goal that I had when I moved back to the farm was...my dad has always been involved with conservation. Soil erosion is something that has just driven him nuts since the day he started farming, so we've worked really hard. He's worked really hard to really try to keep our soil here in northeast Missouri in place so it's going to be there for the future.
Joshlin Yoder: (06:41)
But my goal was to take that even one step farther and see, how could we continue to build the soil, continuing to build on what we've done so we can be even more productive in the future? And that led us to get involved with the different conservation practices, to be excited about our partnership with SHP. Ultimately, the driving forces are our kids, trying to make sure that they have the same opportunities that we've had, if that's what they want to do.
John Mesko: (07:09)
It's interesting that I hear that, something similar, from a lot of people that are focusing on or adding a focus in their operations on conservation, that they are thinking long-term and for the next generation, and I think that's a really powerful motivator. Sometimes that strong motivation that we need when, when times are tough or when we have to make a decision that maybe is a long-term investment and not sure we're going to see the immediate return on it. It's great to hear some of those motivations that you have. And you mentioned the Soil Health Partnership, and you guys have been working with us since 2017. So tell me about your decision to be part of the Soil Health Partnership and to begin doing some of this testing on your farm.
Joshlin Yoder: (07:55)
Yeah, so when we moved back, one of the first things we started to incorporate was less tillage into the practices that we had on our farm in particular, but I'd read a lot about cover crops. And we as a family farm, had grown cereal rye through the winter for many years as a feed source for the cattle operation. So plant in the fall, have it grow over the winter, and then we chop it for haylage in the spring so we could feed that to the cattle.
Joshlin Yoder: (08:23)
So we had some experience with cereal rye, and we'd started dabbling in using it just solely as a cover crop and other places besides for feed, but I read some of the promotional materials that some people would say out there and I'll have to admit, I was pretty skeptical of a lot of the things that some of the gurus would try to espouse about cover crops.
Joshlin Yoder: (08:44)
So when I was approached to be a part of the Soil Health Partnership, I'm a numbers guy, and I was really excited to be involved with the research side of it to see if we do put the cover crops on, which of the things that are being promoted are really happening in the soil and which ones aren't. And being able to have firsthand experience doing that for me is just hugely beneficial because it allows me to implement this on a small scale in some areas, try a variety of different things in these cover crop trials and get some firsthand results then that I can figure out what works and what doesn't so I can spread that out and do it on more acres across my farm.
John Mesko: (09:26)
So what I hear you saying, I think, is that you had heard a lot of people talking about the benefits of cover crops and reduced tillage, but you wanted to see it on your place in a kind of limited trial or kind of, for lack of a better term, dabbling in it to see if it's something that would work for you. If that's the case, what kinds of things have you learned in this trial that you've been working with us on?
Joshlin Yoder: (09:53)
Well, I've learned that for sure soil erosion is something that is improved when we have that growing cover crop out there on the field. We're in highly erodible soils in our part of the world, so again, conserving soil and making sure it stays in place on the farm is probably our number one priority when it comes to conservation and cover crops play a huge role in that. So we're really excited about the results we've seen from that aspect.
Joshlin Yoder: (10:19)
But one of the things that I always felt would be challenging was, could we grow these cover crops and not see yield losses in our farms on a year in year out basis? And that's to me been one of the most exciting things is if we tried not just the cereal rye, but some different species of cover crops at some different times, we have not seen yield drags. I don't know that we've never necessarily seen big yield increases, but combined with keeping yields relatively flat and doing a good job of preventing soil erosion, as well as we've seen some increases in organic matter and some different things like that on the soil testing aspect.
Joshlin Yoder: (11:00)
To me, the benefits have really proven that it is definitely a worthwhile endeavor and we've expanded how much we're using cover crops across the entire operation because of that. We also learned a little bit about which species are easier to manage than others, and the one thing I really tell people ultimately as they start looking into cover crops is you have to figure out how to make it work within your operation. You can't go and do something that's super complicated across a lot of acres if you are not comfortable that you're going to be able to manage that on the backside when it comes time to put your cash crops in the ground too.
John Mesko: (11:37)
Yeah. Well, it sounds like it's been a good experiment for you and that you're taking some of the key learnings and applying them in other places and I think that's great. That's really what the Soil Health Partnership ultimately is set up to do, to learn about these conservation practices on a small scale and then take those learnings and apply them more broadly, and so we certainly appreciate all that you're doing there. I mentioned in the introduction that you and your farm were recently awarded with Missouri's Leopold Conservation Award, that's quite an honor. Can you tell us a little bit more about that award and what it really ... What was it like to be selected for that?
Joshlin Yoder: (12:16)
So the Leopold Conservation Award is, in my mind, a very prestigious award. It's given out in several states across the Midwest and I think even as far out to California they have that award, but it's a pretty intensive application process. There's five categories that the Leopold Award focuses on when they try to select their winners. They look at conservation ethic, how do we work with the ecological community, how are we with innovation and adaptability, how are we with resilience when it comes to our farm, and finally, they look at leadership and communication – which, as I look at our application, one of our strongest points is how we do with telling our story out and about, whether it's through social media or other interactions. And that's where I feel like Addie and I make a really good team on this because Addie is just tremendous with the outreach portion of being involved with conservation and sustainability.
John Mesko: (13:17)
Well, that's great and that's a perfect segue to something I really wanted to spend a little bit of time on here is to really hear more about the work that you're doing, Addie. I know that you have a podcast, you're very active on social media. Tell us what it's like. Why that's important to you to be out there sharing the story and tell us about your podcast and maybe some of the folks that are listening might be interested in hearing more from you by tuning into that.
Addie Yoder: (13:47)
So I got into sharing our farm story probably five or six years ago. I had a small health and fitness kind of business and I had built, at the time, what was a small but engaged platform sharing recipes and having conversations with people about working out and taking care of your body and feeding your families. And so I developed this community of women who were not on the farm, and I would hear conversations, because it was a health and fitness situation, I would hear a lot of conversations about the food that they fed their family and things like GMOs or organics, or all of those topics that we hear about in regards to food specifically.
Addie Yoder: (14:29)
And I would listen and I would listen and I would come to Joshlin and I would say, "Okay, this is what they're saying, but I don't feel like this is exactly right." And we would talk about it and hash it out, but I didn't really know how to approach that in a soft or relatable manner. So I got involved in a couple of things initially. I got involved in volunteering a little bit with the National Corn Growers Association.
Addie Yoder: (14:52)
I did some leadership through them, and that led me to Common Ground and Common Ground is a volunteer organization of farm women who do just that. They have conversations with non-farm women about food and the things they buy in the grocery store and what happens every day on the farm. I learned a lot through them and I learned how to have those conversations in a positive and inclusive way so that it was approachable and easy to say, "Oh, yes, you want this. This is what we do here."
Addie Yoder: (15:24)
So I've been sharing videos and pictures and stories about what happens on our farm specifically for several years because of that. And so now, I guess my philosophy in doing it is if I'm going to have a conversation with someone about a book or about a pair of leggings or something else, maybe they'll remember like, "Hey, that girl told me to read this book and it was great, but I also see that she grows corn so maybe I'm going to ask her about ethanol or about pesticides because in one of her pictures the sprayer was in her front yard."
Addie Yoder: (16:00)
And then it gives me permission too to outwardly share the processes involved or the cover crops that are in the field right next to my house, and to show how relatable and accessible it all is. And I've had some of the best conversations and met some really interesting people, especially in the political climate over the past year. I've had a lot of conversations about different things and environmental stuff, and so for me, as kind of the outward facing part of the farm, this award really kind of gives a stamp of credibility so they can be like, "Oh, but she knows about that."
John Mesko: (16:35)
That's fantastic. And you know what strikes me in hearing the whole story, not just the outreach portion, but you all are building community. When I think about the farming community that I grew up in, dating myself a little bit here, but pre-social media, right? Pre-internet. That community was based on proximity. We knew our neighbors, they were farmers, we sometimes worked together, we helped each other out, that sort of thing, but that was community.
John Mesko: (17:02)
And the definition of the community has changed dramatically, and now community can be ... It’s not necessarily geographically based. Our "neighbors" that maybe share common interests are spread out all over. And you all are really a good example of building that community, a farming community, and the extended community through this outreach that you've got and I think it's fantastic. My hat is off to you and the work that you do, and not on your farm, but representing agriculture as leaders and expanding the community and interest in agriculture and conservation is tremendous. So I say thank you and congratulations.
Joshlin Yoder: (17:47)
Well, thank you.
John Mesko: (17:48)
Well, I certainly appreciate as well the opportunity to visit with you on our podcast and hear more about your farm. Addie, where can people go to connect with you on your podcast?
Addie Yoder: (18:00)
My podcast is on all major streaming platforms. It's called Grace and Growth With Addie, and it is a little bit about farm life and it's a little bit about being a mom and being a person and just trying to find your way. They can connect with me on Instagram at Addie.Yoder, and on Facebook at Grace and Growth With Addie, as well.
John Mesko: (18:21)
That's great. Thank you. I hope that folks listening will join those channels as well. And so again, thank you both for the work that you're doing on your farm, for the work that you're doing expanding the community and educating people. It's a real honor to visit with you today.
Addie Yoder: (18:37)
Well, thank you for letting us come.
