Soil Health Summit: Jerry Hatfield
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11/22/2021
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Recorded Friday, November 19, 2021.
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- [00:00:03.940]So, I guess we have reached
- [00:00:07.560]really probably what you're all waiting for,
- [00:00:09.417]and that is the presentation by
- [00:00:13.240]Jerry Hatfield.
- [00:00:15.590]And Jerry has,
- [00:00:19.700]I suspect that many of you in the room know Jerry
- [00:00:23.300]he's had a very distinguished career
- [00:00:26.040]with the agricultural research service,
- [00:00:28.780]was the Lab Director.
- [00:00:32.970]Some of us were around long enough
- [00:00:35.000]remembered as a Soil Tilth Lab.
- [00:00:37.830]When he retired,
- [00:00:39.250]it was the National Laboratory for Agriculture
- [00:00:43.897]and the Environment at Ames, Iowa.
- [00:00:47.430]He was in that role from 1989 through 2020,
- [00:00:52.640]which should have been long enough to make some pretty good
- [00:00:54.960]observations there Jerry.
- [00:00:59.320]As I said, he does have a very long
- [00:01:01.480]and very distinguished resume.
- [00:01:02.850]A couple of things that I want to point out is that
- [00:01:07.870]you know, we academics,
- [00:01:08.960]we always do this bachelor's degree from Kansas State,
- [00:01:13.170]Master's Degree from University of Kentucky
- [00:01:15.780]and PhD from Iowa State.
- [00:01:18.650]Throughout his career he's focused on the role
- [00:01:21.120]of management practices that
- [00:01:22.510]enhance soil health to increase the efficiency of
- [00:01:25.690]agricultural systems in the use of natural resources.
- [00:01:29.780]And I think that's why we're here today
- [00:01:32.520]is to talk about that.
- [00:01:37.780]Because of his expertise he's been asked to serve in many
- [00:01:42.780]roles,
- [00:01:44.630]he represented ARS
- [00:01:47.570]in many venues,
- [00:01:48.840]including the Heinz Center project
- [00:01:51.560]on the State of the Nation's Ecosystems,
- [00:01:54.670]the Key Indicators Initiative,
- [00:01:57.350]the National Audubon Society project
- [00:01:59.490]on Waterbirds on Working Lands,
- [00:02:02.130]and the Agricultural Air Quality Task Force for USDA,
- [00:02:07.100]He's the lead author on the Agriculture section
- [00:02:09.470]of the Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3
- [00:02:13.850]on "The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture,
- [00:02:17.200]Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity".
- [00:02:21.280]He was part of the IPCC process
- [00:02:24.871]that received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
- [00:02:28.790]and he currently serves on the IPCC special committee
- [00:02:33.080]to evaluate the impact of extreme events on ecosystems.
- [00:02:37.760]He's a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy,
- [00:02:40.680]Crop Science Society of America,
- [00:02:42.553]and Soil Science Society of America,
- [00:02:45.625]Past-President of the American Society of Agronomy.
- [00:02:49.330]He's a member of the Board of Directors of the Soil
- [00:02:51.190]and Water Conservation Society
- [00:02:53.220]and a member of American Geophysical Union
- [00:02:56.140]and American Meteorological Society.
- [00:02:58.840]And I think this may be a little known fact about Jerry
- [00:03:03.110]is that in his academic
- [00:03:05.710]degrees,
- [00:03:06.950]Climatology was one of the things he studied.
- [00:03:11.690]His numerous awards include election to the
- [00:03:13.553]ARS Hall of Fame for his research on
- [00:03:15.850]improving agriculture and environmental quality.
- [00:03:19.440]The Hugh Hammond Bennett award for his national
- [00:03:21.833]and international work on conservation,
- [00:03:24.320]and a Presidential Rank Award for meritorious service
- [00:03:28.020]to agriculture on environmental quality.
- [00:03:31.910]I'll just mention as an aside
- [00:03:33.440]that he's the author or co-author
- [00:03:35.060]of 498 referee publications
- [00:03:38.230]and the editor of 18 monographs.
- [00:03:40.950]Which is certainly indicative of the work
- [00:03:43.550]that he's done over the years.
- [00:03:45.240]And he's recently edited a book on decision-making titled
- [00:03:49.810]The Farmer's Decision,
- [00:03:51.890]Balancing Economic Successful Agriculture
- [00:03:55.153]with Environmental Quality.
- [00:03:57.830]And I think that's a very appropriate thought as we talk
- [00:04:02.360]about the day-to-day.
- [00:04:04.240]So if you would please help me welcome
- [00:04:07.980]Jerry
- [00:04:09.130]to the front of the room.
- [00:04:10.100]We don't have a podium, so I can't say a podium,
- [00:04:12.590]so I will pass him the mic and he can wander around.
- [00:04:16.350]I think he has a lavalier mic.
- [00:04:17.820]Is that right?
- [00:04:19.420]So Jerry, thank you for joining us.
- [00:04:22.420]We are very, very privileged to have you today.
- [00:04:25.046](people clapping)
- [00:04:29.860]Let's start the first slide
- [00:04:31.010]and everything because we have a lot to cover
- [00:04:33.036]in a short amount of time there.
- [00:04:35.440]I'm really glad that Ron mentioned one particular term
- [00:04:37.830]in he's introduction.
- [00:04:39.230]And that's a fact of ecology.
- [00:04:40.870]How do we begin to look at agriculture
- [00:04:42.690]as an ecological system?
- [00:04:44.300]Because I am tired
- [00:04:47.560]of agriculture looking at it
- [00:04:49.500]from this way,
- [00:04:50.810]Ecologist looking at it from this way,
- [00:04:52.890]because we live in an Agro ecological system.
- [00:04:57.660]We need to figure out how we fit agriculture
- [00:05:00.820]into the broader context of ecology,
- [00:05:04.070]ecosystems,
- [00:05:05.070]because I've made this statement before
- [00:05:09.800]40 years ago.
- [00:05:11.190]If you talked about agriculture
- [00:05:12.710]and you talked about ecology together,
- [00:05:14.420]you were considered somewhat of a wacko.
- [00:05:18.190]Ray knows exactly what I'm talking about.
- [00:05:20.690]I dare say, and this would have been my prediction.
- [00:05:23.570]If we would embrace the fact that agriculture
- [00:05:25.755]and ecology come together 40 years ago,
- [00:05:28.350]we wouldn't have the problems we have today
- [00:05:31.350]because we would approach it from an
- [00:05:32.950]entirely different perspective.
- [00:05:34.570]And you're going to see a little bit of that come through.
- [00:05:37.300]Since I crossed the river,
- [00:05:40.420]you know, now I'm an expert in all of these topics,
- [00:05:45.060]but I go back on the other side of the river,
- [00:05:46.760]then I've got to put up with different things,
- [00:05:48.460]but you know,
- [00:05:49.293]so anyway, bear with me as we go through this,
- [00:05:52.230]we're going to talk about soil health
- [00:05:53.790]because our future depends on it.
- [00:05:56.640]Our future really depends on how we begin to treat the soil,
- [00:05:59.638]how we improve the soil and everything else.
- [00:06:02.570]So if we can go to the next slide,
- [00:06:06.040]you saw the subtitle in there,
- [00:06:07.620]soil health, what is it?
- [00:06:09.020]What it could be?
- [00:06:10.330]What it could be and how do we get there?
- [00:06:12.230]And we'll spend a lot of time on how can we get there
- [00:06:14.297]to this overall process.
- [00:06:16.040]Let's go to the next one and everything else.
- [00:06:17.787]If you go to the FAO in terms of looking at the functions of
- [00:06:20.950]soil, you see this large diagram that's out there.
- [00:06:23.610]And we talk about all these things.
- [00:06:25.290]Ron mentioned the fact that civil engineers treat it as a
- [00:06:27.770]substance in which we can grow
- [00:06:31.430]buildings.
- [00:06:32.960]Agriculture we talk about a substance
- [00:06:34.820]in which we can grow plants
- [00:06:36.220]and everything else,
- [00:06:37.830]but I'm going to break it down into a little more dynamic
- [00:06:41.810]aspects relative to agriculture.
- [00:06:43.500]And that is,
- [00:06:44.540]let's think about the functions of soil relative
- [00:06:46.570]in an agricultural context,
- [00:06:48.000]we want it to provide support for the plant.
- [00:06:49.976]We want it to supply water.
- [00:06:51.288]We want it to supply nutrients.
- [00:06:52.968]We want it to do carbon cycling.
- [00:06:55.540]And we want actually to decompose pesticides
- [00:06:59.277]and antibiotics within that soil.
- [00:07:01.130]So these are the functions that we really value
- [00:07:04.050]when it comes to soil for agricultural context.
- [00:07:08.340]So you think about it from that perspective.
- [00:07:10.500]If you look at it from this piece,
- [00:07:12.088]in terms of soil health,
- [00:07:14.170]is a little bit like human health,
- [00:07:15.780]and that's,
- [00:07:16.613]we've tried to draw that analogy all the time
- [00:07:18.560]is that change in physical, chemical
- [00:07:20.920]and biological properties.
- [00:07:22.310]And you think about what a Physician does to you
- [00:07:24.307]in terms of health.
- [00:07:25.315]They look at the physical aspects,
- [00:07:26.947]they look at the chemical aspects,
- [00:07:28.187]they look at the biological aspects.
- [00:07:30.860]But in reality,
- [00:07:32.460]when we think about soil and soil health,
- [00:07:34.870]it's that capacity of the soil to function as a living
- [00:07:38.290]ecosystem.
- [00:07:40.500]A living ecosystem that sustains plants,
- [00:07:44.740]animals,
- [00:07:45.573]and humans.
- [00:07:49.360]And we could just stop right there.
- [00:07:52.570]Cause that's really, when we think about soil health,
- [00:07:55.370]that's what it is.
- [00:07:57.100]And that's how we need to start thinking about it.
- [00:07:59.170]We'll spend a lot of time arguing about what's the most
- [00:08:02.040]proper measurement to make in terms of soil health.
- [00:08:04.477]You got all of these different pieces in here,
- [00:08:06.485]and we're more fascinated with the measurement
- [00:08:10.210]than we are thinking about what it means
- [00:08:12.100]in the context of agriculture.
- [00:08:14.850]And so I think we need to look at this from a different
- [00:08:16.810]aspect.
- [00:08:17.810]When we look at the current state of soils
- [00:08:19.540]and I'll spend just a little bit of time on this
- [00:08:22.010]because
- [00:08:23.480]went back and I looked at the Morrow plots
- [00:08:25.900]and the Sanborn plots and everything else,
- [00:08:28.280]because this is kind of an indication of what
- [00:08:31.010]we have done in agriculture to our soil resource.
- [00:08:34.730]And you see where they started an organic matter.
- [00:08:36.716]You see those different systems that are out there
- [00:08:39.230]in terms of Corn-Oats-Hay,
- [00:08:41.840]Corn-Oats,
- [00:08:42.673]and then a Corn-Soybean rotation
- [00:08:44.090]and continuous corn.
- [00:08:45.670]And you know,
- [00:08:46.503]these only go through 1980 with that continuous corn
- [00:08:50.230]and everything else.
- [00:08:51.063]You've lost 60% of the original organic matter
- [00:08:55.130]in 110 years.
- [00:08:57.320]Sanborn plots and Missouri lost about 70% of
- [00:08:59.930]that organic matter.
- [00:09:00.763]So we've changed this
- [00:09:01.687]and we have to bear responsibility for that.
- [00:09:05.260]We as humans have basically made our soils different.
- [00:09:10.750]And so we have an art of responsibility on that.
- [00:09:14.970]Our agricultural systems have changed our soils,
- [00:09:17.600]we've removed organic matter through tillage.
- [00:09:20.220]I won't spend a lot of time beating up on tillage,
- [00:09:22.500]but it does oxidize a lot of carbon back
- [00:09:25.110]into the atmosphere.
- [00:09:27.000]We actually have adopted cropping practices
- [00:09:29.930]that limit the return of carbon to the soil.
- [00:09:33.930]We have to be cognizant of that,
- [00:09:35.400]the fact that we want this thing to work,
- [00:09:37.860]we've got to also admit the fact
- [00:09:39.780]that we are very shortsighted
- [00:09:43.060]when it comes to how much carbon we put back into that.
- [00:09:46.520]In the essence,
- [00:09:47.353]we have reduced our functionality to soils
- [00:09:49.510]and we've increased our reliance on external inputs.
- [00:09:54.150]We value the support function of soil,
- [00:09:58.310]more than we value the cycling function of soil.
- [00:10:01.250]We say, well, we can supply the nutrients.
- [00:10:04.090]We can supply the herbicides.
- [00:10:05.500]We can take care of all of this.
- [00:10:06.930]And so we treat the soil as a medium to grow plants,
- [00:10:09.382]not as a living system and all of this.
- [00:10:12.860]And then the bottom line is
- [00:10:15.210]that we see increased erosion rates
- [00:10:17.920]and increased soil degradation across our landscape.
- [00:10:23.490]All you have to do is drive around the spring and look,
- [00:10:25.710]and you see all this hillsides with erosion on,
- [00:10:28.580]you see movement in there.
- [00:10:30.590]We did a calculation a number of years ago
- [00:10:33.010]that for every bushel of corn,
- [00:10:37.650]we produce an Iowa.
- [00:10:41.830]We lose about two bushels of soil.
- [00:10:48.800]I got called to the carpet on that statement one day
- [00:10:52.530]by the head of DNR and the head of Idels.
- [00:10:55.090]And I was a how'd you come up with that number?
- [00:10:58.440]It's just not reasonable.
- [00:11:00.920]And I said, well, it's your numbers.
- [00:11:03.550]He goes, what do you mean it's my numbers?
- [00:11:04.780]I never said that.
- [00:11:06.620]I said, well, if you look at it,
- [00:11:07.790]here's the expected erosion rate across the state
- [00:11:10.130]and everything else.
- [00:11:10.963]Here's the amount of corn we produce.
- [00:11:12.640]If you take this amount of erosion rate
- [00:11:14.930]on the number of acres that we farm times to the corn
- [00:11:17.270]and you do a simple division
- [00:11:18.370]and he goes, oh crap.
- [00:11:23.000]You know,
- [00:11:24.120]so we need to face realism at times
- [00:11:26.690]in terms of what we're going
- [00:11:28.200]in terms of this overall process.
- [00:11:30.502]There's another report that came out from IPCC in 2019
- [00:11:34.540]that hasn't gotten a lot of attention,
- [00:11:36.990]but does call it the dynamic of all of this together because
- [00:11:41.360]they got very concerned about land degradation
- [00:11:44.210]because we've been pushing IPCC.
- [00:11:46.860]We've been pushing the U.S climate force
- [00:11:49.560]to really recognize soils as a critical piece
- [00:11:52.182]of climate response.
- [00:11:54.390]Not from the carbon sequestration,
- [00:11:56.500]but from the impact of the climate signals on soil.
- [00:12:01.390]And one of the part of this,
- [00:12:02.450]is the land degradation piece of this
- [00:12:04.540]because we're seeing more
- [00:12:06.480]and more on the worldwide basis,
- [00:12:08.600]a threat to our productivity and food security,
- [00:12:11.660]because we've degraded our soils.
- [00:12:14.740]We no longer have the capacity
- [00:12:16.380]and a lot of places out there.
- [00:12:17.810]And so we need to think about aspects in terms of how
- [00:12:22.030]we've degraded our soils,
- [00:12:23.334]how what this means to us
- [00:12:25.180]and all these different pieces
- [00:12:26.500]that are going on because it is of critical concern.
- [00:12:30.460]Because if we look forward to 2050,
- [00:12:37.430]projected that we're probably going to lose
- [00:12:40.680]because of the increased population,
- [00:12:42.990]250 million acres around the world.
- [00:12:48.700]Think about that from a perspective,
- [00:12:52.770]we farm about 400 million in the United States.
- [00:12:56.900]That means if we lose 250 million acres,
- [00:12:59.900]we're basically almost two thirds of the arable land
- [00:13:02.870]the United States is gonna disappear from land production,
- [00:13:05.600]not from degradation,
- [00:13:07.940]but from houses, roads,
- [00:13:09.596]and what it takes to house 10 billion people.
- [00:13:14.380]So we're gonna have to have every bit of land produce more
- [00:13:18.196]and more efficiently to be able to provide food security.
- [00:13:24.170]And I think we need to face the realism
- [00:13:26.770]of what's going on
- [00:13:27.780]in terms of our land resource
- [00:13:29.600]and what we do on this aspect.
- [00:13:31.820]So let's think about what it could be,
- [00:13:34.540]because this is the exciting part, in my opinion.
- [00:13:36.870]How can we take what we have today
- [00:13:39.380]and make it better as we go forward?
- [00:13:42.470]Now let's just started this
- [00:13:43.510]and think about the scales
- [00:13:44.680]that we talk about in agriculture.
- [00:13:47.676]We often talk about it from a soil profile point of view.
- [00:13:51.030]We talk about it from a field point of view.
- [00:13:53.130]We talk about it from a landscape point of view.
- [00:13:55.090]And so our view of soil health,
- [00:13:58.040]excuse me.
- [00:13:58.873]Soil health often becomes jaded
- [00:14:03.070]by the scale
- [00:14:03.903]that we think about.
- [00:14:05.530]If we're interested in that profile out there,
- [00:14:07.940]we may think,
- [00:14:08.773]well, there's just that one soil within the field.
- [00:14:13.270]If you think about it from that field,
- [00:14:14.420]we can see all the soil diversity within that
- [00:14:15.810]we think about that landscape.
- [00:14:17.730]Now you've got the cropping practices,
- [00:14:19.580]you've got the soil, you've got the topography,
- [00:14:21.236]you got all those other pieces of the ecosystem
- [00:14:24.330]that now begin to play.
- [00:14:26.170]So we also have a scale dependency
- [00:14:28.690]in terms of these overall dynamics.
- [00:14:32.000]We've done a lot of work on what we call the.
- [00:14:35.360]It's an NRCS database,
- [00:14:37.990]it's a National Crop Commodity Productivity Index.
- [00:14:40.950]It's kind of a different aspect
- [00:14:42.950]of the corn suitability rating.
- [00:14:45.770]And I actually like it better
- [00:14:46.800]because it incorporates soil
- [00:14:48.570]it incorporates a lot of the climate pieces.
- [00:14:50.324]This is the variation of the NCCPI,
- [00:14:52.930]just on agricultural land across the Midwest.
- [00:14:56.360]Sorry, I didn't include Nebraska in this.
- [00:14:58.760]It was Midwestern focused
- [00:15:00.425]because of what we were trying to do,
- [00:15:02.250]but those really dark brown areas
- [00:15:04.520]are really high quality soils.
- [00:15:06.790]We move all of this and we move the corn belt north
- [00:15:09.920]and west.
- [00:15:10.753]We're moving it into lower quality soils
- [00:15:12.460]that are suited to those crops as well.
- [00:15:14.800]But here's what it means because we did another analysis
- [00:15:18.650]and we took that NCCPI
- [00:15:20.250]and related it to county average yields across three states.
- [00:15:26.390]I did Kentucky, Iowa
- [00:15:29.290]and Nebraska
- [00:15:30.910]on soybeans.
- [00:15:32.090]And we did just Iowa and Kentucky on corn.
- [00:15:35.990]And you see, as that NCCPI goes from zero,
- [00:15:39.400]which is a parking lot.
- [00:15:41.440]There's no infiltration,
- [00:15:42.705]to one,
- [00:15:43.630]which is a high quality soil.
- [00:15:44.790]So it just goes zero to one.
- [00:15:46.820]You look at this in terms of the average county yield
- [00:15:49.440]and each one of those data points represents
- [00:15:51.240]40 years of data coming out of the NASS database.
- [00:15:54.620]So there's a lot of variation around that.
- [00:15:56.600]We didn't plot the air bars,
- [00:15:57.770]it just got too messy.
- [00:15:59.240]So you look at Kentucky soils,
- [00:16:01.390]they're really fairly poor.
- [00:16:02.510]They're very, very weathered.
- [00:16:03.620]You see low average county yields.
- [00:16:05.360]In fact, there's some places in there
- [00:16:07.510]in which that zero
- [00:16:10.300]on the, in the yield distribution.
- [00:16:13.150]The better we make the soil,
- [00:16:14.410]the higher, the average county yield.
- [00:16:17.330]And then you can say, well, gee,
- [00:16:18.780]Nebraska is really good
- [00:16:21.130]because it's not showing any relationship
- [00:16:23.320]to the quality of soils.
- [00:16:25.570]We must be really fantastic.
- [00:16:27.920]No, you're not.
- [00:16:28.753]We just cherry pick the irrigated counties.
- [00:16:35.330]You can control the weather through irrigation.
- [00:16:38.470]The quality of the soil doesn't mean a whole lot
- [00:16:41.810]because you're supplying water when it needs it.
- [00:16:44.090]But if you're relying on summer rainfall
- [00:16:47.010]and that storage within that soil profile,
- [00:16:49.510]that quality of the soil means everything to you.
- [00:16:52.610]And so when we began to look at this
- [00:16:54.440]and we see all these different pieces,
- [00:16:56.550]we begin to see these dynamics that are going on.
- [00:17:00.250]Here's another piece of this.
- [00:17:01.440]This is some data that we have.
- [00:17:03.400]I've been doing a work with Wayne Fredericks,
- [00:17:05.480]which is a producer up in Mitchell County, Iowa.
- [00:17:07.740]It's basically at the Iowa, Minnesota border.
- [00:17:11.436]We've been taking his fields, looking at it in very,
- [00:17:15.050]very detailed fashion.
- [00:17:16.430]And looking at this,
- [00:17:17.731]these are just three fields where he's changed
- [00:17:20.690]from no-till
- [00:17:21.665]into no-till soybeans,
- [00:17:23.530]strip to a corn strip to a corn from 2002
- [00:17:28.180]and the irrigated or the no-till beans have been since
- [00:17:31.910]1992,
- [00:17:33.320]these are the organic matters taken across those different
- [00:17:36.120]fields.
- [00:17:36.953]And all this, you see this increase that we go on
- [00:17:39.870]in terms of this process,
- [00:17:41.781]we put the fence rows on there.
- [00:17:43.740]In fact, we looked at what the potential was.
- [00:17:46.556]You know, we're getting 6.1%, a couple of those fields,
- [00:17:50.246]and we've taken all these fields as well,
- [00:17:52.490]but we've done a very deep dive into his data,
- [00:17:54.685]looking at the changes that are occurring within that.
- [00:17:58.340]The other piece of this,
- [00:17:59.570]because we're all dependent on water that back to
- [00:18:02.560]that NCCPI,
- [00:18:03.850]we're dependent on water is
- [00:18:05.580]that we need to understand that
- [00:18:07.680]we can change these soil dynamics.
- [00:18:09.590]So there's a little collage.
- [00:18:11.420]You know, you look at all these different
- [00:18:12.770]soil water holding capacities and
- [00:18:14.550]how Berto would probably talk about that as well,
- [00:18:16.710]because that's what we're interested in.
- [00:18:18.680]You look at this available water
- [00:18:20.400]across all those different textures.
- [00:18:22.840]Hudson in 1994,
- [00:18:24.840]published a paper where he looked at
- [00:18:27.054]available water capacity relative to organic matter.
- [00:18:30.480]And then that lower slide.
- [00:18:32.480]What I say to that, I took a silt loam soil, and I said,
- [00:18:35.380]you know, how many days of available water?
- [00:18:38.020]If we assume a five-foot profile
- [00:18:42.230]with corn during the grain filling period.
- [00:18:44.850]And if you go from two to 4% organic matter,
- [00:18:48.090]you have five more days of available water in which
- [00:18:50.720]that plant is not going to be stressed.
- [00:18:54.140]Storing water within the profile makes grain
- [00:18:57.550]in terms of this overall process.
- [00:18:59.140]So that soil health really begins to translate directly into
- [00:19:02.470]productivity, yields stability,
- [00:19:04.450]and all these different things that are going on.
- [00:19:07.110]So the question is, how do we get there?
- [00:19:08.900]How do we get to this next step and all of this?
- [00:19:11.740]So it really becomes this way.
- [00:19:16.180]I have another slide that I talk about the soil degradation,
- [00:19:18.334]spiraled in all of this,
- [00:19:20.650]but now we're going to just grade soils.
- [00:19:22.440]We're going to build them back up.
- [00:19:23.930]The first step in building soil back up
- [00:19:26.970]is to restore biological activity within that soil.
- [00:19:32.400]The first rung on that ladder is
- [00:19:34.360]being able to promote biological activity.
- [00:19:38.000]Once we begin to change the biological activity,
- [00:19:40.670]you see organic matter turnover.
- [00:19:42.110]You see improved nutrient cycling.
- [00:19:43.930]All of these things are the invisible and dynamic processes.
- [00:19:47.694]But what you do see
- [00:19:50.740]is improved soil structure.
- [00:19:52.200]You see aggregate stability, you see improve water capacity,
- [00:19:55.750]all those things.
- [00:19:56.583]Those are the things we can see within that.
- [00:19:58.710]And you look at those indicators of soil health,
- [00:20:01.580]because we're all fascinated by what measurement do we make
- [00:20:05.690]in terms of soil health.
- [00:20:07.750]You've got microbial activity,
- [00:20:09.650]you've got organic matter changes.
- [00:20:11.340]You've got water availability, nutrient available,
- [00:20:13.126]aggregate stability, infiltration rates, gas exchange,
- [00:20:16.770]all those things are indicators of soil health.
- [00:20:22.160]But I dare say that there is no one of those that gives you
- [00:20:24.900]the exact answer that we need.
- [00:20:28.510]We need a conglomeration,
- [00:20:30.490]just like a physician does not only take blood pressure.
- [00:20:34.790]They'll run you through a whole barrage of tests
- [00:20:37.420]to figure out what your health is.
- [00:20:39.890]Same thing in terms of soil,
- [00:20:41.070]we need to be looking at the suite of practices
- [00:20:43.470]that are out there and what it means for us as well.
- [00:20:46.200]It's an energy driven process,
- [00:20:47.517]and we think about how we improve the soil is
- [00:20:49.690]that we have to put more energy into that system,
- [00:20:53.400]than we take out of the system.
- [00:20:55.622]And I think that we really need to begin to think about this
- [00:20:58.230]overall system as being a function of energy.
- [00:21:03.140]And I'll explain that to you in a little bit as we go
- [00:21:05.740]through this,
- [00:21:06.573]because now you begin to see
- [00:21:07.650]that what we're really trying to capture
- [00:21:10.850]is the living dynamic part of this system as well.
- [00:21:15.260]And so, as we begin this journey,
- [00:21:18.170]let's think about it from this perspective,
- [00:21:19.850]because what all we are in agriculture
- [00:21:23.101]is a big solar collector.
- [00:21:26.800]We take sunlight
- [00:21:29.890]in a plant leaf we take CO2 and water
- [00:21:32.007]and we create a simple sugar.
- [00:21:34.950]We take that sugar and we transport it through the plant
- [00:21:37.780]stem through the roots.
- [00:21:39.200]Though some of that exudes out of
- [00:21:41.160]the plant root that feeds those
- [00:21:42.900]microbes that are going on.
- [00:21:44.770]They feed the overall soil fauna.
- [00:21:47.220]There is all these different things.
- [00:21:48.840]And so we partition that into nutrient cycling
- [00:21:51.100]and carbon cycling.
- [00:21:52.160]You can go all the aspects of all these things back to food,
- [00:21:55.420]feed, fiber and fuel.
- [00:21:57.080]You can take the CO2 back out and we put it back into the
- [00:21:59.670]atmosphere and we recycle it.
- [00:22:01.900]So in agriculture, we are in the carbon energy process.
- [00:22:07.543]That's why we spend a lot of time this past year looking at
- [00:22:11.022]just this whole energy flow system,
- [00:22:13.810]because I really began to think that we need to recalibrate
- [00:22:18.810]our overall aspects of how do we think about the path to
- [00:22:21.820]improving soil health.
- [00:22:23.790]So I came across this paper written by a couple of Russians
- [00:22:27.070]that talked about soil processes going on,
- [00:22:30.340]and it's a big long review paper and everything else,
- [00:22:33.290]but it stuck that same diagram that we had
- [00:22:37.050]in terms of carbon flow.
- [00:22:38.360]And it talked about the primary sugars that are going in
- [00:22:41.220]and how it gets into sort of an organic matter
- [00:22:43.673]in terms of years.
- [00:22:44.793]But there were things that they found that were happening in
- [00:22:47.690]terms of seconds.
- [00:22:49.553]Exudate coming out of that root system is about 40% of
- [00:22:54.330]the carbon that goes to that root is going
- [00:22:57.267]out as an exudate.
- [00:22:59.640]So we're putting a lot of sugar in there
- [00:23:01.970]and we've estimated that an, a corn crop in central Iowa,
- [00:23:05.590]that we're generating
- [00:23:11.070]30 to 40,000 mega calories
- [00:23:15.100]per acre
- [00:23:17.140]every summer.
- [00:23:19.030]That is a great deal of energy that we put into
- [00:23:22.690]that system that we could do something with
- [00:23:25.240]that feed those microbes.
- [00:23:26.764]And a lot of this is going on in short periods of time.
- [00:23:29.610]We see all these different aspects that are there.
- [00:23:32.210]We see all these different aspects of what's going on in the
- [00:23:35.460]faded sugars that are in there.
- [00:23:37.670]These simple sugars create monomers
- [00:23:40.240]in terms of short-term polysaccharides.
- [00:23:42.600]Those are the things that hold those clay particles
- [00:23:44.620]together, gluco proteins that are out there,
- [00:23:46.604]those bind those mineral and organic to soil aggregates.
- [00:23:50.740]As they begin to put this together,
- [00:23:53.400]we have carbon increases that are within
- [00:23:55.697]and in parentheses,
- [00:23:56.680]I put sequestrations because if you begin to look at this,
- [00:24:02.960]I don't believe there's any such thing as a stable soil,
- [00:24:06.080]organic matter,
- [00:24:08.870]that may be heresy to a lot of people.
- [00:24:10.780]But what we're seeing is that soil organic matter is
- [00:24:14.380]subjected to all the microbial activity.
- [00:24:16.500]The more we make the microbial activity,
- [00:24:18.361]the more it's chewing out,
- [00:24:19.660]we're do seeing an aggregate increase of soil carbon,
- [00:24:25.430]but it may go up and down.
- [00:24:26.880]And one of the things we saw in Wayne's fields is when we
- [00:24:29.150]sampled that we began to look at these pulses
- [00:24:31.700]going across years.
- [00:24:33.610]In fact,
- [00:24:34.443]the soil organic matter was up one year
- [00:24:35.740]and maybe down a little bit the next year,
- [00:24:37.410]looking at the same spots because of the increase in
- [00:24:40.020]microbial activity and what crop was growing on it
- [00:24:43.020]and how much sugar we were putting into it.
- [00:24:45.710]So we began to see different changes that are going on.
- [00:24:47.970]So I think we really need to think this overall process
- [00:24:50.850]that's out there.
- [00:24:52.190]And then part of the sugar that's going on is just the
- [00:24:54.530]maintenance of microbial activity and functions within that.
- [00:25:00.810]Some of you've heard me say that beneath an acre of really
- [00:25:04.260]healthy soil is the equivalent of two African elephants of
- [00:25:08.300]microbiological activity,
- [00:25:11.140]has 10,000 pounds
- [00:25:14.290]of biological material
- [00:25:16.600]that's eating something and demanding to be eaten.
- [00:25:20.920]And so you got all of these different things that are going
- [00:25:23.510]on within that in terms of biological activity.
- [00:25:26.740]There's another piece of this picture that was put together
- [00:25:29.880]by Wiessmeyer and colleagues and everything else,
- [00:25:33.390]which is I thought was very intriguing from a standpoint
- [00:25:36.450]because they went through a very detailed med analysis
- [00:25:39.470]and it looks at, you know,
- [00:25:40.390]what really causes soil, organic carbon changes
- [00:25:43.290]within the soil.
- [00:25:45.014]And so he looked at all the different literature
- [00:25:46.710]and they kind of rank them down on there,
- [00:25:48.220]so we just did them by arrows.
- [00:25:49.760]There's the first one that really
- [00:25:50.950]changes microbial or stall organic carbon
- [00:25:54.004]is microorganisms and fauna.
- [00:25:57.631]And then you get to clay content
- [00:25:59.600]and you get the land use management
- [00:26:01.070]and then vegetation climate topography.
- [00:26:03.300]Finally, you get down to physics and chemistry,
- [00:26:05.490]is that the biggest driver they found looking across all the
- [00:26:09.040]literature throughout there was that we had to think about
- [00:26:11.490]the biological system
- [00:26:13.120]and then how we managed it around it.
- [00:26:15.630]And then the clays that went with it.
- [00:26:18.000]Those are the top three that are out there.
- [00:26:19.720]And so maybe we need to think,
- [00:26:22.000]change our thinking
- [00:26:24.120]about how we really begin to change our soil
- [00:26:26.690]that's out there.
- [00:26:28.450]And so you look at all these different practices
- [00:26:30.073]that contribute to soil health.
- [00:26:31.590]And these are not original with me because these are the
- [00:26:33.550]ones that everybody talks about.
- [00:26:35.250]We talk about continuing reduced tillage.
- [00:26:37.260]We talk about continuous cover.
- [00:26:38.564]We talk about cover crops,
- [00:26:40.150]crop diversity,
- [00:26:40.983]livestock, and bio-based fertilizers.
- [00:26:43.900]I put it over on bio-based fertilizers
- [00:26:45.414]because everybody loves that more than manure.
- [00:26:51.268]Smells better.
- [00:26:52.140]It smells better.
- [00:26:54.040]You know,
- [00:26:55.260]so I've worked with a lot of companies right now
- [00:26:57.180]that were,
- [00:26:58.013]but the bio based fertilizers has one unique aspect
- [00:27:01.274]that make a much better in terms of improving soil health
- [00:27:04.474]is because they have carbon with them.
- [00:27:07.300]We're also supplying energy when we put
- [00:27:09.236]that material into that,
- [00:27:11.170]in terms of a carbon based material.
- [00:27:13.660]And we look at that carbon going back into it,
- [00:27:15.777]it adds to that energy source that's out there.
- [00:27:19.480]And so we can begin to think about it from an entirely
- [00:27:21.840]different perspective as well.
- [00:27:24.280]But here's the challenges.
- [00:27:27.140]The challenges are that we need to implement practices
- [00:27:30.040]that increase our carbon input
- [00:27:32.590]and decrease our carbon loss.
- [00:27:35.720]If we want to change our soil,
- [00:27:38.610]it's much like your retirement account.
- [00:27:41.920]Think about your retirement account.
- [00:27:44.000]What do you do?
- [00:27:45.440]You put money into it.
- [00:27:47.900]You don't take money out.
- [00:27:50.330]You had diversified your portfolio
- [00:27:53.100]and you invest for the long run.
- [00:27:55.710]That's the way we need to think about our soils is
- [00:27:57.970]that we need to be putting that energy in.
- [00:28:00.510]We need to making sure that it's as positive
- [00:28:03.500]as possible.
- [00:28:07.770]In order to continue to accrue that energy source
- [00:28:10.230]that's out there.
- [00:28:11.560]But we also need to think about practicing continuous
- [00:28:14.040]improvement and adaptive management.
- [00:28:16.900]These are not practices
- [00:28:20.490]that
- [00:28:22.960]can be just locked in place.
- [00:28:24.750]They require continuous improvement and adaptive management.
- [00:28:30.550]Working with a bunch of producers last night.
- [00:28:33.120]Good long of them have been in there.
- [00:28:34.280]And some guy just got into a strip till,
- [00:28:36.850]and I asked him, I said,
- [00:28:37.690]so what tweaks are you going to make after the first year?
- [00:28:40.450]He said, well,
- [00:28:41.283]this is the things I've learned the first year
- [00:28:43.420]that I'm going to change this next year.
- [00:28:46.270]And the guy that had been doing it for 25 years said, yes
- [00:28:49.270]he said, I did those same changes on my piece as well.
- [00:28:53.340]So I think we need to realize that we've got a flexible
- [00:28:56.290]system and all of this,
- [00:28:57.550]the other piece of this is we need continue evaluation of
- [00:29:00.560]the overall system.
- [00:29:02.040]Are you improving productivity?
- [00:29:04.570]Are you improving production efficiency in all of these
- [00:29:08.160]different pieces that are going on?
- [00:29:09.770]Are we meeting better on return on investment?
- [00:29:12.690]And return on investment,
- [00:29:13.673]just not in dollars input,
- [00:29:16.980]return on investment of the water resource,
- [00:29:20.510]the light resource,
- [00:29:21.760]the nutrient resource that we put into that.
- [00:29:25.120]That's all we'll begin to respond very, very quickly
- [00:29:27.320]and all of this.
- [00:29:28.310]And so now I've come up with a new term and that's,
- [00:29:31.810]I think we need to start implementing
- [00:29:33.510]Transformational Agronomy.
- [00:29:36.560]Transformational Agronomy me is,
- [00:29:38.380]now we began to think about how do we begin to
- [00:29:41.060]transform the system by the soil plant atmosphere
- [00:29:44.182]aspects that we have out there.
- [00:29:46.920]How do we begin to transform that system,
- [00:29:49.220]Think about it differently, all these different pieces?
- [00:29:51.920]Because we have
- [00:29:54.420]tons of tools.
- [00:29:57.530]We have tons of data.
- [00:30:00.760]What we really lack is good solid information
- [00:30:04.310]that says this is what we need to do on
- [00:30:06.420]this particular farm,
- [00:30:07.880]this particular soil,
- [00:30:08.891]this particular crop.
- [00:30:11.760]And you begin to look at it from an entirely different
- [00:30:13.850]perspective in all of this.
- [00:30:15.860]So this is my contact information.
- [00:30:19.600]I think there's probably time for a few questions
- [00:30:22.370]in all of this.
- [00:30:23.203]But feel free to email me,
- [00:30:25.400]because I always figure out that people have a lot
- [00:30:28.270]of questions after I finished talking.
- [00:30:30.090]And you can always call me on my cell phone,
- [00:30:32.200]just do not
- [00:30:35.350]try to sell me extended warranty for my car,
- [00:30:38.750]pay off my student loans,
- [00:30:40.400]which I've done already
- [00:30:42.120]and offer me new health insurance.
- [00:30:44.470]So, so don't start it off by saying,
- [00:30:47.720]gosh, you know,
- [00:30:48.560]you need the extended warranty on your car.
- [00:30:50.360]So anyway,
- [00:30:51.410]but there's my contact information.
- [00:30:53.410]I have a lot of dialogue going on constantly
- [00:30:55.524]since I retired. I don't have to put up with the
- [00:30:58.320]bureaucracy of the government.
- [00:30:59.500]I can spend the time doing something else.
- [00:31:01.260]So with that questions.
- [00:31:06.711](people clapping)
- [00:31:11.662]I think we have time for one or two questions.
- [00:31:15.130]My detail folks reminded me of something
- [00:31:17.290]that I forgot earlier.
- [00:31:18.840]So we'll do that later,
- [00:31:19.900]but couple questions for
- [00:31:23.740]Jerry.
- [00:31:29.400]Jerry you talked about the impact
- [00:31:31.200]that carbon has
- [00:31:32.890]you know
- [00:31:33.723]on yields.
- [00:31:34.556]What about the impact on the quality of the crops?
- [00:31:38.500]Yeah, I mean, that's that thank you for bringing that up.
- [00:31:41.510]That'll give me another 15 minutes of dialogue,
- [00:31:43.980]but the,
- [00:31:45.910]I think that one of the pieces that
- [00:31:47.360]we spend too much time thinking about productivity
- [00:31:50.610]in terms of quantity,
- [00:31:52.810]but not enough thinking about quality,
- [00:31:54.320]because one of the things we do see improve soil health is
- [00:31:56.863]that we're seeing improved quality of that product
- [00:32:01.180]and food security in my opinion,
- [00:32:02.690]is really coming from the quality of the food
- [00:32:04.650]that we ought to be talking about rather than the quantity.
- [00:32:07.290]And I think we need to have that dialogue
- [00:32:09.380]and there's more and more interest in all of this.
- [00:32:12.730]Unfortunately, I get pushback from producers saying, well,
- [00:32:15.480]we don't get paid for quality yet.
- [00:32:18.450]I think that time will come in which we can start getting
- [00:32:21.010]that put into a different dynamic,
- [00:32:23.580]particularly with all the groups that are now thinking,
- [00:32:26.040]well, I need a sustainability profile.
- [00:32:28.870]I need all this.
- [00:32:29.900]You look at this carbon sequestration piece
- [00:32:32.560]and carbon markets.
- [00:32:33.860]I think quality become a different piece of this puzzle
- [00:32:36.660]as we go forward,
- [00:32:37.870]but we're going to have to begin to document the fact
- [00:32:40.371]that we are changing the quality aspects.
- [00:32:43.070]We know that when we improve soil health,
- [00:32:45.250]we improve the protein content of corn.
- [00:32:47.870]We see a different oil structure on beans as well.
- [00:32:50.650]So there's aspects where we need to get more
- [00:32:52.810]and more data on this and,
- [00:32:53.862]begin to change the dynamic of how we talk about it
- [00:32:57.790]because it's paying as dividends.
- [00:33:00.650]Jerry,
- [00:33:01.483]we have a question came in online that is somewhat related.
- [00:33:06.690]What's the percentage of organic matter that needs to be
- [00:33:09.150]considered for health?
- [00:33:12.740]Depends.
- [00:33:15.630]Where are you starting from?
- [00:33:17.917]In all of this,
- [00:33:19.020]I mean, Central Iowa Soils,
- [00:33:20.690]let's look at a Clarion Nicollet Webster association
- [00:33:23.970]and I've got organic matters in of one field
- [00:33:26.890]that go from 9% to 2%,
- [00:33:28.110]as we go up the slope and everything.
- [00:33:30.740]So it depends on what soil we're talking about.
- [00:33:34.940]Wayne's data where we live this aspect is
- [00:33:38.430]that we looked at organic matters
- [00:33:39.810]within particular soil types,
- [00:33:41.410]but we looked at the yield distribution.
- [00:33:43.540]And what we found is that as we were improving organic
- [00:33:47.090]matter from 2 to 4%,
- [00:33:49.380]we basically took the low yielding parts of that soil out.
- [00:33:53.580]And we were making it tighter around the mean,
- [00:33:55.590]and we were increasing all sorts of dynamics going on.
- [00:33:59.120]So we can check these changes,
- [00:34:01.720]but this is a very complex.
- [00:34:06.090]The organic matter piece of this is very complex,
- [00:34:08.390]particularly when you begin to realize that organic matter
- [00:34:10.780]is rather fluid and all of this.
- [00:34:13.100]What's new to help increase soil health.
- [00:34:19.490]The new technology is that
- [00:34:23.270]let's start thinking about how we plant green
- [00:34:26.070]and I'll get that to Keith and everything.
- [00:34:28.630]I think we need to really think about
- [00:34:30.737]how we take our systems and begin to manage it.
- [00:34:34.796]That continuous cover that we have out there with cover
- [00:34:37.565]crops and being able to plant green into this.
- [00:34:40.480]We've got producers that are now planting green into rye,
- [00:34:43.700]and then combining that rye
- [00:34:45.441]and then getting the soybeans out of it before
- [00:34:48.500]and still, and they're going, wow,
- [00:34:50.340]I'm getting as much soybean yield before,
- [00:34:52.110]but now they got all the rye seed put for cover crops down
- [00:34:54.930]along the way.
- [00:34:56.402]So I think there's some new technology,
- [00:34:58.740]but I think we need to start thinking about how do we take
- [00:35:01.180]our data with producers and everything else and putting it
- [00:35:04.620]into context that helped them.
- [00:35:06.050]That's that Transformational Agronomy piece.
- [00:35:08.350]So there's any technology we can use.
- [00:35:09.873]Yeah.
- [00:35:10.706]We've got Remote Sensing.
- [00:35:11.900]We've got Artificial Intelligence,
- [00:35:14.020]we've got Machine Learning.
- [00:35:15.250]We've got more tools
- [00:35:17.393]that we have at our disposal,
- [00:35:20.960]to help producers do a better job,
- [00:35:23.560]but we've got to get that affordable.
- [00:35:26.010]We've got to get it translated
- [00:35:28.140]and we've got to get it implemented.
- [00:35:32.230]We can make a major change in agriculture
- [00:35:34.280]and improve our efficiency very dramatically in all of this.
- [00:35:39.980]Thanks, Jerry.
- [00:35:41.270]Let's all thank Jerry, for a great talk.
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