-: The following presentation
is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture seminar series
at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
-: Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to the Agronomy and Horticulture seminar series.
It is my great honor today to introduce today's speaker,
Dr. Andrea Basche.
Andrea is a assistant professor
in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.
She received her bachelor degree
in biological science and philosophy
from Fordham University,
her master in applied climate science
from Columbia University.
She received a PhD in crop production,
physiology and sustainable agriculture
from Iowa State University.
Andrea teaches several undergrad course here
in the department,
include Resource Efficient Crop Management,
Crop Management Strategies,
and other courses.
Her research focus is on cropping system sustainability.
So without further ado,
I'll turn this to Andrea, okay.
Andrea: Great.
Well, thank you Luci for the introduction,
and the committee for the opportunity to kick off
the spring semester seminar series.
And this is really a great chance
for me to introduce,
or reintroduce myself to some of you,
and share what my team has been working on
since I started in my role just over four years ago.
And so, I'm gonna talk mostly today about our research,
but I also wanna share some learnings
from students in my classes.
And I hope to illustrate in the presentation
how our work is
adding to a growing body of knowledge
around the benefits of crop diversity,
and diversity more broadly.
And you'll see,
I deliberately titled my presentation collaborative,
because none of this work that I'm sharing
has been done alone,
it's been done with many others,
and that's really a kind of core practice or value of mine.
I feel like most of the work I've done in my career
has been in teams.
And so I wanted to, you know,
she share that explicitly as I see it
as really an important part of our path forward
to solving challenges.
And I want to get started with just a quick restatement
of some of the goals that we are working toward,
as an institution,
and a scientific community,
and then situate our work within it.
And so the goal that I'm showing you here
is from the Institute of Ag and Natural Resources
strategic plan,
and I've underlined some of the key points that
we have a goal of supporting bio-based economy
with sustainable food, fiber,
and natural resources.
You know, I also wanna note
that embedded within INR,
we also recognize the value of diversity
at the bottom of this pyramid.
You know, diversity,
I'm mostly talking about crop diversity,
but also in terms of people,
and ideas,
and who feels they belong within our community.
And so I really appreciate in this diagram,
that maximizing impact is at the top of the pyramid,
recognizing kind of everything below it
being critical to achieving this impact.
And I'm gonna come back to this a little bit later.
And then within our scientific societies here,
I'm showing you one community
within the American Society of Agronomy,
as I believe this is a broad goal
that many of us within the department and institute
are working toward.
Of course, the goal of balancing crop yields,
and negative environmental impacts
from agriculture of underlined
a few key things here too,
you know, balancing all of these metrics,
particularly the socioeconomic components
really is a challenge, right?
And so with that said on the goals,
what are some of the,
the of challenges that we're dealing with,
and that our work is trying to address?
And so, we all know right now that the pandemic,
and supply chain issues have led to real shortages
of herbicides,
and inability for producers
to procure their preferred crop inputs.
And even though commodity prices
have increased significantly as of late,
so have fertilizer costs.
And so for some products,
they're more than double or even tripled
than what they were in recent years.
And we know that every year and every season
seems to bring new weather extremes.
So 2019 was one of the wettest years in the US,
including in Nebraska,
I'm sure that flooding is still very present
in many of our memories.
Since then, we've really had drier
and hotter months,
and hotter conditions.
And the state right now,
much of it is in drought,
or abnormally dry conditions,
and really has been so for about a year or more.
And then something else that is always heavy on my mind
is this trend of consolidation,
particularly as someone
who works closely with our undergraduates,
and many of you do as well,
many of our undergraduates intend to farm in the future,
and I'm always thinking about how these trends
they don't need to be destiny for our young people
who want to farm.
And you know,
and just a brief story here,
I'm really fortunate to now be serving as a co-author
on the "Fifth National Climate Assessment"
for the chapter that will focus on our region,
the Northern Great Plains,
and in a recent session that we had with stakeholders,
someone raised a really articulate point
about how he is hearing from many people,
he works particularly with tribal communities
this trend, you know,
it goes across rural urban populations in our region,
that for many communities,
it's really a struggle to keep people in place,
with economic trends,
with climate,
and I think that how we can help people stay in place,
and have a good livelihood,
is really what I think our mission,
my own mission,
mission of the land-grant university
is really about that idea of keeping people
with a good livelihood in place.
And now back to cropping systems.
So when I talk about cropping systems in class,
I sometimes share a schematic that looks like this.
It's a reminder of all the things
that are involved in a cropping system, right?
It's not just the crops that we grow,
in terms of timing, orientation, et cetera.
It's the external inputs,
as well as the natural resources,
like sunlight, rain, soil.
It's also the outputs that we glean,
which are not just yield,
but also profit,
and environmental outcomes.
And it's also the people,
like you see in the middle,
who are working on,
or studying the land.
And what I wanna illustrate,
and what we're finding in our work so far,
is that when we try to utilize more
of those natural resources,
namely sunlight for longer periods of the year,
and our soil,
to reduce the loss of soil,
or improve its function.
And when we do those things
through a diversification approach,
that we can conserve resources,
and improve profitability.
And so, what I wanna show you here
is how I feel our work is contributing
to this important body of knowledge.
And what I'm gonna share with you in particular today
is our work related to cover crops grown
in corn-soybean rotations,
sometimes with other crops,
as well as some of our initial work with Kernza,
which is a perennial grain crop.
And so, again,
these approaches,
thinking about natural resource utilization,
extending the growing window,
and covering the soil.
So I wanna move next into our research,
and sharing some of the things that we have learned
about diversified management,
and its ability to meet some of those challenges
that I just shared with you.
And I wanna start with a truly collaborative project,
that is supported by the NRCS,
and includes the work of two of our graduate students.
The first is the work that I'm gonna share
from Fernanda Krupek,
who you see in the photo here on the left,
on the right, you see Fernanda again,
as well as Sal Ramirez,
who's a postdoc working on our team,
as well as Tauana Almeida.
I'm gonna share some of her work later,
she's a graduate student with us.
And then Alex Urban who's from the NRCS,
and I just wanna,
you know, share they were such a huge help to us
last spring and summer,
with field sampling,
and in so many other ways,
I'm sure you all know,
and experienced with COVID,
and those challenges of getting support,
we were just so grateful to have their support,
and good spirit in the,
in the field and in many other ways.
And so this project is one that started
actually in 2016 and 2017,
even prior to my arrival here.
It involves a number of on-farm research experiments
across the state.
And the way it worked was that farmers got to decide
what kind of soil health management system
they wanted to study on their farms.
And that means that these experiments include
a number of different things,
pretty much all of them include cover crops in some fashion,
some include cover crops,
and livestock raising,
some include cover crops in different crop rotations,
and so that's the context for what I'm going to share
about some of the things that Fernanda,
and our other graduate student, Elizabeth Oys have found.
And I also want to show more of the team behind our project.
So this is again,
a great collaborative endeavor,
with research, students, postdocs,
Daren Redfearn in our department,
extension educators like Laura Thompson,
and Nathan Mueller,
and state soil health specialist
Aaron Hird there in the middle from NRCS,
as well as his colleagues around the state.
And now, one of Fernanda's many projects
that we recently had published in the journal
"Geoderma" was a synthesis of soil test results
from 10 on-farm experiments.
And so the tricky thing that she did so well in this project
was to create different metrics
for some of those various experiments,
and soil health management systems
that were included on the farms,
so that we could compare across different experiments.
And so of those indices was cover crop use.
So that's what you see here.
So we basically grouped and standardized the studies
based on the length of time
that they were using cover crops.
And so the bigger circles,
and the darker colors that you see here
are farms that have been using cover crops
for a longer period of time.
And so in this paper,
she analyzed improvements
from soil health management systems
on various soil properties,
including those that are a part of the
Haney soil health test.
And one of the things that that test tries to do,
is to incorporate more of the
microbially available carbon and nitrogen pools,
beyond what you would get
from a traditional chemical soil test.
And so the figure on the left
is showing the relationship
between predicted nitrogen release,
and then soil biological activity CO2
at the bottom.
And so, the figure on the right
shows the nitrogen potential savings,
and these are grouped again,
by the length of time that the farms used cover crops.
And what Fernanda found is really promising,
it's that those farms that grew cover crops
for longer periods of time,
actually had greater soil biological test activity,
as you can see on the left.
And although we would expect to see
that kind of relationship between the biological activity,
the soil test biological activity,
and the predicted nitrogen lease,
release, the trend is clear
that the longer use of cover crops
led to the greater potential for nitrogen release,
and as a result,
the greater potential for nitrogen savings
for a subsequent wheat or corn crop.
And so we know that soil health tests like this are
a snapshot in time,
they're a way to monitor changes,
but what this does, we believe,
is it underscores this point
that there's potential nutrient and economic savings
from that improved biological activity
related to this diversified management with cover crops.
Okay.
So the next student with data from this project
that I wanna share is Elizabeth Oys.
And so she is planning to present her master's projects
in her defense later this spring.
And she has been focused on four of those farms,
two of the on-farm,
or two of the farm, excuse me,
four of the farms,
and two experiment stations
that have had cover crops in use for several years,
to see how the cover crops are impacting weed communities.
And she's done something that is really interesting,
but really time consuming.
So last spring,
she collected soil from those farms,
and then watered that soil in the greenhouse
to see what weed communities emerge from the seed bank.
And then she also went back during the growing season
to see what weeds emerged.
And so for seven months of last year,
she counted and categorized all the weeds that emerged,
and it's really interesting,
because it can tell us
more than just what is
above ground,
which is often what is measured.
And so again,
she focused on four of those farms
that had a particular design with a cover crop,
and a no cover crop control, again,
as well as data from two experiments that had cover crops
in use for several years at South Central Ag Lab,
at ENREC in Eastern Nebraska.
And so I'm showing you just data
from one of those on-farm sites here,
the left is the seed bank,
and the right is the above-ground weeds that emerge,
and we are excited by her work,
because we do think it's honing our understanding,
or filling in the blanks really,
around the role that cover crops can play with weeds.
And what we found is that it's not really simple,
(Andrea laughs)
it's not always as simple as a relationship
as just like more cover crop biomass leads to less weeds,
but what we're seeing is some different trends
in what is in the seed bank,
and what weeds actually emerge during the growing season.
And so on the left,
you're looking at the difference,
again, just from one of the on-farm sites,
this is a site in Greeley County,
where she actually counted a significant increase
in pigweed seeds from the seed bank
in the cover crop treatment,
that's on the left,
but on the right,
when she went back during the growing season
to measure the weeds that emerged,
both before and after post-emergent herbicide application,
that the cover crop had significantly reduced
the total weeds that emerged.
And although this is just one of six sites,
the work does show us
that cover crops have potential to
reduce the density of weeds that emerge,
even if there are weeds that are present in the seed bank.
And she also has some evidence
that the cover crops could be increasing weed diversity,
which is really interesting.
It's something that research notes
is an indicator of ecosystem function,
and it could suggest
that there is a less competitive weed community overall.
In other work I've recently published
with colleagues from Iowa State University,
we describe some of the other potential ways
that cover crops could be shifting weed communities,
delaying their emergence,
increasing weed seed predation.
Again, it's not just as simple as
it's not always just as simple as
more biomass of cover crops
leads to more suppression of weeds.
There's many other that could be happening,
and we think that this work is exciting to help
fill in some of those blanks for us.
Okay.
So, the next project
that I wanna focus a little more time on,
because we have some really exciting results
that we've found so far.
And so I'm gonna share some work that we are doing
with the Precision Sustainable Agriculture Project,
that's being led by PhD student Tauana Almeida,
you see here in the photos.
So this is a project
that is a Sustainable Ag Systems Award from USDA-NIFA,
and our involvement includes
supporting two experiments at ENREC,
and three on-farm trials for three years.
It's also supporting my own,
and Sam Wortman's involvement
in the creation of a brand new cover crop course.
It's been very exciting.
We launched it last fall.
We had 50 students across two sections online and resident.
I'm really not even gonna say more about that.
I probably could have a whole seminar about
how we developed that course,
and executed it across six other institutions,
but for now,
I just wanna share some results
from one of the experiments at ENREC
in our first year, 2021,
or 2020 and 2021.
And let me tell you a little bit more about the experiment.
In some ways it's a very classic agronomy experiment,
that we are looking at corn,
with six different nitrogen rates,
and three cover crop treatments,
as well as a cover crop control,
no cover crop control,
as I'm showing you here in the slide.
And so we are planting cover crops
in late,
the late summer, following oats.
So this wouldn't represent
not just a corn-soybean rotation,
but that is because the goal of the experiment
is to understand if and how cover crops
can change optimal nitrogen rates.
And I'm really proud to say that in our first year,
we grew perhaps the most perfect cover crop
I've grown to this point in my career.
And in particular,
the mix in the cereal rye produced significant biomass,
it's what you see in the photo here,
right before termination last April.
So we had very full stands,
really excellent fall growth,
and we terminated at perhaps the exact right time
before the rye really started to get taller,
such that it would've increased its carbon content.
So you can see here,
the carbon and nitrogen ratios of the decomposing biomass
over the growing season,
and the rye and the mixture
never reached a carbon and nitrogen ratio
that's known to initiate immobilization.
That's a really encouraging result.
And I do wanna note in the photo here,
research technician, Tom Galusha
who supports most all of our field experiments,
none of this would be possible without his
experience and,
and guidance.
And so, to get those carbon and nitrogen ratios
that just showed you over the growing season,
we filled litterbags at cover crop termination,
and then left them in the field to decompose,
and then removed them to measure
the carbon and nitrogen content over the growing season
as you can see in this illustration.
And then what I'm showing you here
is the nitrogen that was released cumulatively
over the season,
and this is weeks after cover crop termination.
So you can see the cumulative release
for the three treatments was between
70 and 80 kilograms per hectare,
which is really significant, you know,
and what a cover crop can do
when we give it more sunlight and time to grow.
So there are several interesting things
that I wanna draw your attention to here.
The first is that what I'm showing you are
the corn yields in the 160 pounds of nitrogen treatment.
The first is that even with that
really large amount of rye and mix cover crop,
we didn't see any negative yield impact on corn
relative to the control.
So that's the treatments from left to right in the graph
one, two, and four.
We did see that corn following hairy vetch
was significantly higher than the control.
And then,
actually let me make sure that table doesn't go away.
The table that I'm showing you here
is actually showing how the vetch treatment
compares to the control at other nitrogen rates, right?
So we're trying to determine in this experiment,
if the cover crop is,
has the potential to change,
or potentially reduce nitrogen rates,
so essentially,
we did not see statistical differences in corn yield
following hairy vetch with 80 pounds of nitrogen,
relative to the control grown at 160 pounds of nitrogen,
so that's the top two rows in that table.
And then if you go up one nitrogen rate,
we did not see any statistical difference in corn yield
with the vetch at 160 pounds of nitrogen,
compared to the control at 240 pounds of N.
So let me just show you some like back of the envelope
calculations related to this,
for what those results might mean for input costs.
So again, these top two bullets
are what I just told you about the yields,
that, you know,
hairy vetch did in some nitrogen rates increase,
yield relative to the control.
And if we, you know,
look at the end rates a little differently,
we don't see differences when you subtract 80 pounds
in the hairy vetch treatment.
But if we compare the cost we paid for
the vetch seed,
I know it's not minimal,
a dollar 90 a pound times the seeding rate,
you get an amount that is nearly the same,
or even a little bit of a savings
compared to how much 80 pounds of,
of nitrogen would cost at,
at current fertilizer costs.
And if we think about that significant amount of biomass
in the rye and mix treatments,
we did have excellent weed suppression.
(Andrea laughs)
In this case,
I'm not showing you that data.
It was to a growth level that prior research,
and our experience was that it could have allowed us
to potentially
reduce the amount of herbicides that we use,
and suppress a high amount of weeds.
And so, the rye seed costs were about $15 an acre,
which definitely comparable to herbicide costs
depending on the program.
And so we think that this is, you know,
really promising results from year one,
to show what a cover crop can do again
for potential fertilizer,
or herbicide costs when we
again, give the plant more sunlight to photosynthesize.
And now we fully realize that these are not simple changes
that we're talking about from any producers
that we're talking about maybe
including more crops in the rotation,
and really shifting herbicide or,
or fertilizer programs.
So we know that this is a challenge.
If it was easy, right?
Everybody would already be doing it.
But we are using some of the knowledge
that we're gaining from our research
to try to support
an understanding of what is possible for cover crop biomass,
and then relate it to some of these potential savings.
And I do wanna make a very brief mention
of a project funded by
the Nebraska Environmental Trust
that Katja Koehler-Cole and I have been co-leading,
and this is to develop a predictive tool
for the state
where you can select
your location,
soil type,
planting and termination,
dates for cover crops,
and get estimates of biomass,
as well as probabilities for those different estimates of,
of cover crop biomass.
And we will have this launched later this year,
on the CropWatch platform,
along with more specific cover crop information
to Nebraska,
and we share this,
and we hope to make it a call
to those of you who are working in this realm,
to have the opportunity to integrate your work
into our platform.
And I just wanna note too,
that the basis of this tool
is work that our former postdoc Nilovna Chatterjee led
that we published in 2020.
We set up the ABSA model to predict cover crop biomass
with experiments that had been established
by Chris Proctor, Roger Elmore,
and Angela Bastidas,
who's a former PhD student here.
So again,
collaborative effort there to even get this off the ground,
and even more so that we've done this work
alongside colleagues at the Holland Computing Center,
they've been working with us,
as well as a panel of producers,
just real cover crop innovators in the state
to help us keep the platform,
and grounded in function,
and answering questions that will be helpful to,
to their audience.
Okay.
So that's what I wanna say about cover crops.
And I wanna pivot briefly to share
some of our work with Kernza.
So the work that I'm gonna share
and make mention of here
is a part of
another large project funded by USDA-NIFA,
that's being led by the University of Minnesota,
and Roberta Rebesquini is working on this project
for her master's work,
as well as Tom Galusha,
who again,
has been so willing to experiment with me in this new crop.
So Kernza is the grass that you see
in the photo on the left.
It is a perennial grain crop.
Intermediate wheat grass.
If you're familiar with the Eurasian forage grass,
scientists at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas,
have been selecting for agronomic traits
over the last few decades of
intermediate wheat grass.
And this effort that we're a part of now is
I would have to guess,
the largest public investment to date on Kernza.
And the team includes supply chain experts,
extension, education.
Our main contribution is going to be
to support two field experiments
that we planted this past fall,
involving intercropping some new varieties,
as well as a fertility trial
to try to hone nutrient recommendations.
And I just wanna briefly share some highlights.
This is from what Roberta presented
at the agronomy meetings last fall.
Tom and I started a small Kernza variety trial,
we planted that in 2018 on east campus,
some of you maybe had the opportunity to see it.
And we're now working
so we harvested three years of data,
we're working on publishing that
with some of our collaborators
at The Land Institute and others.
And what we saw was really strong,
comparable performance across varieties in Nebraska,
including in the first year,
we had one of the highest performing varieties
at any of the sites.
And then in 2019,
we planted an experiment
that we've managing organically with Kernza intercropped
with several different legumes,
including alfalfa,
and we again saw great performance there,
even higher yields,
and in some of the variety trial yields.
And so, I guess the,
the point of this is to say it's,
you know, been our kind of preliminary work,
but we've learned how to,
to plant and harvest the crop,
is that there is a lot of potential for Kernza in Nebraska,
again, in terms of its performance relative to
how it's done elsewhere.
I think it has particular use
for operations that have livestock,
research shows that it can perform
even better when it's grazed,
or cut for hay in fall and spring.
And, you know, I do wanna say,
sharing, you know,
we're studying cautiously and optimistically,
that I'm not naive enough,
or nor are my collaborators on these projects
to think that this is a crop that's ready
for millions of acres next year,
but we're really, you know,
cautiously and optimistically studying it for its potential.
You know, and relatedly,
I do wanna share, you know,
with my Kernza collaborators,
the meetings, the team,
every time we get together,
I just leave really feeling hopeful and inspired.
And this is a snapshot on the left of a poem that was read
at a virtual meeting from a Kernza farmer in Minnesota
about igniting civic imagination.
And, you know,
a reminder that although we know that
having a perennial agriculture feature
might be a long road ahead,
but I,
I hope that we won't be limited by our imagination,
that's what this poem did for me.
And I,
there's always this unique element of our meetings
where there's music, or poetry,
or delicious Kernza food.
This photo on the right
was delicious Kernza bread
for BLTs,
and outstanding Kernza beer in the background.
So this work to me is really inspiring and hopeful.
And I can speak for myself,
but maybe for others that
hope and inspiration are things that I really need
more than ever right now.
Okay, so now that I've gone on a little bit about
beer and food,
and we're nearing the end of a Friday afternoon,
I wanted to kind of conclude my presentation
by sharing some about students,
and teaching,
which again, is my primary appointment in the department.
So I wanna share some stories about student learning,
and why I feel it's really important
that we tell some different stories,
and try to bring more people,
and more diverse perspectives into our classroom.
So let me start by telling you
about some of the collaborations that I've had
within my capstone course,
which again, is called Crop Management Strategies.
And the general idea with this course
is that it gives students an opportunity
to do whole-farm planning,
or integrated management,
where they can take kind of all the things they've learned
in their prior classes,
and prior experiences,
and synthesize that into a management plan.
So what we do is visit farms,
a farm,
or series of farms,
early in the semester,
learn about their goals and challenges,
and then work on a management plan
over the course of the semester.
So in 2019,
I was awarded a SARE partnership grant
with my friend and colleague, Angie Carter,
a sociologist at Michigan Tech,
who has done extensive work with women landowners
in the Midwest.
And so why did we focus on women landowners?
You may know that women own,
or co-own,
about 42% of land in Nebraska.
And that percentage is fairly consistent
across the Corn Belt and the Midwest.
So women own a lot of land,
but because farming
is quite honestly often recognized as men's work,
women are frequently excluded from conversations
about what's happening on their land.
And so often,
women and other non-operator landowners
are often very willing
to support their predominantly male tenants
in advancing conservation and diversification on their land.
And so in 2019,
we had three women landowner-tenant pairs
as our case study farmers.
And what happened when we intentionally presented
the voices of women and landowners perspectives
that we don't always bring into
maybe a class like this, you know,
the students really did gain a lot from it.
So this is a quote from a student.
This is in a publication that Angie and I
published last year.
A student here is describing how they were
exposed to the importance of these
landowner-tenant relationships,
and how necessary they are really
for the longevity of the farm.
And I think this is really important,
because so many of our students
intend to farm in the future,
and they'll wrestle soon with these relationships,
if they are not already.
We also heard similar perspectives,
sharing another student quote here,
that this case study shifted the student's perspectives
on non-operator landowners being concerned about
more than just a rent check,
we heard that a lot.
That
they recognized the care,
and the concern that these women landowners had
for their land.
You know, and again,
their ability to support change,
and support their tenants
in conservation.
And then Angie and I are working on another paper
where we're trying to focus on the
learnings of the landowners.
And so this is a quote from one of the women landowners
that I think is really
to me, at The Land Grant,
an exceptional reminder of whose voices we uplift,
and the value that we can provide in just listening to,
to different voices.
And so this landowner felt very much
that the ideas that she had presented to her tenant,
she'd been talking about 'em,
that they were not really heard in essence,
until we came as a university,
and listened,
and then suggested them as well.
And so we can probably all relate to this
in our own lives too,
that sometimes it takes someone else to,
to tell us the same thing to really hear it.
And so again,
I think a reminder for the support that we can provide
when we listen to some different voices.
I wanna give you another example
from my capstone course,
which is that the last two years,
and in the upcoming year,
we've had just this super partnership
with Annette Sudbeck,
and Becky Ravenkamp,
with Lewis and Clark Natural Resource District
in Northeast Nebraska.
They have a Nebraska Environmental Trust grant
that supports student travel,
which I'm really proud that we're able to do.
Becky is the coordinator of a watershed project,
where she's working with producers
to utilize more conservation,
with a goal of improving water quality
in the Boat Creek watershed.
And yes, this is a picture of us
getting ready to kayak the Missouri River.
It's not a picture of us in a corn or soybean field,
that this was a real highlight for me.
We love to kayak,
but it also proved really powerful to the students.
You know,
that we brought them along with these farmers
who are talking about their connection to Boat Creek,
and growing up in that area,
and getting to recreate on the water.
We also had
Nebraska Game and Parks biologists out with us,
we did a stream assessment.
We did all of these things,
and I wanna show you some of the student quotes here
about what they learned from the trip,
and the semester learning alongside this collaboration.
And so, the first quote that you see on the left,
this realization from a student that
agriculture impacts the environment,
and this ought to be something
maybe that we should be thinking about
more of these connections with our crop management.
And then the second quote on the right,
I just love both of these quotes,
but really this,
this last one,
the student is describing the value of seeing these farmers
who had a conservation orientation.
This last line,
I, this is what the student said,
I did not plant this,
but I just love the fact that they reflected on
that we are the deciding factor
for how long the soil will serve us.
And so, along with some of my graduate students,
we're gonna work on trying to analyze
some of the student learning
to better understand what the,
the student specifically gained
from this experiential learning,
and collaboration with farmers,
and the Natural Resource District.
I'm just really appreciative of this partnership.
And I also wanna share a little bit about
another course that I teach,
Agronomy 204,
which is Resource Efficient Crop Management.
It's a larger course,
have a lot of students across the College of Agriculture,
including in our department.
And it is an introduction to many crop management concepts.
So, I wanted to share a little bit here,
because we're trying some different things with the class.
This last year,
I had the excellent teaching support of Sal Ramirez,
and we really tried to interrogate
this definition of efficiency with the students.
So I thought I'd share this definition here.
And so when we talk about efficiency,
I think most people immediately go to productivity.
That's what efficiency means, right?
But the definition is definitely broader.
You know, it includes the idea
that we don't want to have waste.
We wanna try to minimize waste.
You know, and in the context of the research I've shared
for the students,
and their own future,
you know, minimizing waste,
it's not just about inputs, right?
It's also about natural resources,
and trying to utilize them
the most efficient way that we can.
I also do like that the definition includes
something about being organized,
that's probably a nice lesson for crop management,
as well as other aspects of our lives.
And now we could probably have a nice conversation
just ourselves in a seminar
defining what the title of my class means,
but I wanted to,
to throw that out there,
because again, when we try to define what is efficient,
we can, you know,
focus on thinking about that definition in different ways,
and maybe tell some different stories.
And so what we did
with the course last year,
we had a,
a short video where we asked
short video and then asked students
to look at an original extension publication
from George Washington Carver,
I imagine many of us are familiar
with his amazing life and work.
So he was a preeminent agricultural scientist
at Tuskegee University
that pioneered many of the fundamental agronomy concepts
that we are familiar with today,
including crop rotations.
And so in the module,
we asked students to explain how the bulletin,
really short and digestible,
describe how it pertains to resource use efficiency.
And I really appreciated the student's response.
So I underlined some key points.
This first point,
the idea that a diverse farm is a self-sufficient farm.
I thought that was a really great reflection.
And later here in the quote that
the more that farmers can produce themselves,
the more efficient they'll be.
And that can be done through crop diversity, right?
So I thought this was just a really nice summary
of what the student learning was
from hearing this different story.
And when I look back actually,
at our evaluations from last year,
the crop rotation module
happened to be the highest ranked one,
for our whole,
all the modules in the course,
and that could have been Sal's excellent videos,
he did the videos that week,
could have been the experiential learning that we did,
we went out and collected some data from Daren Redfearn,
Alyssa Kuhn's crop rotation site on east campus,
or it could include telling this different story, right?
So it all tells me that there's a value
telling different stories,
helping students to learn and grow.
You know, related to diversity,
and belonging for our students,
that comes alongside efforts that we took in the class
to make education accessible.
So I did want to share that Sal and I,
and then he, this year,
we really hustled.
We worked hard to provide an experience for students
that was a hybrid.
So we had a flipped classroom,
we had videos online,
we did the recitations by Zoom,
then we recorded them,
it had students in the classroom.
He helped me hone a lot of our in-person activities,
and make them even better.
And we had great student feedback about this.
So 87% of students agreed
that the course was well adapted for the pandemic,
which was super
for validating the hard work.
And then interestingly, you know,
we did have a lot of students that chose to come in person,
this was spring of 2021.
But for those who engaged via Zoom,
or via the recordings later,
half of them,
nearly half the class said that when they
did not join in person,
it was not because of COVID.
It was probably more for their preference, right?
I know many of you know this too,
how many students of ours have part-time jobs,
or family responsibilities, right?
And so, I think this goes to show the importance of
making our content available to students,
so that they can engage and be their,
you know, most complete selves.
And then this is a really interesting finding too.
There was really limited agreement
of what students might want in the future, right?
So when we asked about the preference for hybrid courses,
42% like it,
a third don't like it,
and a quarter are neutral, right?
So,
that tells me that there is
divergence in our student population,
and, you know,
the potential to meet their needs
is not going to be uniform, right?
And so, I think that the collaborative team effort
really helped us have more capacity
to provide this broad experience for students
that they told us did support their learning.
So this last year, as you can see,
is pretty busy.
If I didn't respond to a request,
you might get a sense of why,
this is where we've had to focus a lot of energy,
and student support.
And then related to diversity and inclusion,
I did want to share,
as I near to the end of my presentation,
a plug for another discussion series
that I have been a part of a team
who's planning within the umbrella
of the the Inclusive Classrooms Community of Practice,
along with dean Heng-Moss and her office's support.
And so what we're planning this spring,
we'll have information out early next week.
And she mentioned this
in the INR all-hands meeting last week,
we'll have a seven-week discussion series
on advancing inclusion,
it's gonna be Thursdays at lunchtime.
It's gonna build on the summer series
about the urgency of inclusive classrooms from last year.
And I did want to share again,
this INR pyramid,
the idea that valuing diversity,
and accelerating inclusion,
are key to maximizing impact.
And really in my mind,
that's important of course,
in science, but,
you know, supporting human beings as we have in our,
our goal here
to be their most productive, creative,
and happy selves is just really in my mind
the right thing to do
in figuring out ways we can be kind,
and supportive to each other.
And so I hope that this kind of professional development
is beneficial to hoping us,
helping us all reach that goal.
And then coming back to the beginning
with this additional goal from the N2025 strategic plan
related to innovation,
and interdisciplinarity,
I do think in our group,
we're really trying to meet this goal.
And I see collaboration really as a key to it.
And then finally,
I wanna thank my team again.
I really could not do my job
without the support of these
great humans,
and our dogs.
And so if you thought you'd make it through
a whole 40 minutes of my presentation
without one photo of my dog,
that's Quincy there on the right,
you were wrong.
There he is.
So just wrapping up,
I do believe that our work
is demonstrating how diversification strategies
have the potential to reduce inputs,
increase profitability,
I see this as adding to an already strong body of work,
but showing real potential in Nebraska.
I did wanna reiterate too,
that resource use efficiency,
this concept of efficiency
is broader than just productivity,
it includes reducing waste,
and, you know,
utilizing both inputs and natural resources,
and, you know,
the approaches that we're taking to do this
really have to do with sunlight and soil.
And then finally,
the goals that we have,
I recognize that they are challenging,
and multidimensional,
but again,
within INR,
we recognize and appreciate
that maximizing impact necessitates valuing diversity,
and accelerating inclusion and..
I did what just wanna end
on a note that I do really appreciate working here
at UNL in this department,
alongside all of you who I know understand and,
and value diversity in many of its forms.
And, I do think that sometimes we can be
limited in taking the next steps,
advancing some of our goals,
and I guess I just encourage us
not to be limited by our imaginations,
and to get to work with the change that we wanna see.
And so I thank you for joining this afternoon,
and look forward to continuing to work toward
our goals together.
Thanks.
-: Okay.
Thanks, Andrea for a great presentation.
Let's give her a round of virtual applause.
-: I can hear it.
-: So, yeah.
So for a question and an answer segment,
if you have a question,
you can either click raise hand icon,
and I will allow you
to ask,
and also you can also type your question in the chat box.
And I see there's already a couple question in the chat box,
so I will read these questions first.
So, this first question is from Dr. David Holding,
he ask,
"Did the cover crops affect the emergence or dominance
of Roundup-resistant weeds?"
-: That, thanks David for that question.
I assume you're probably referring to
some of Elizabeth's projects.
We did see..
so in terms of emergence,
the most commonly classified weed that she found
in the seed bank was pigweed,
across all of those sites.
I know that at some of the sites,
the total weeds,
like the data that I showed were reduced,
which would
mean that has the potential to have reduced
herbicide-resistant weeds.
That's probably the best answer that I can give
for you right now.
But
we did see some at some sites at some of the intervals
where she measured
the reduction of weed emergence,
including some that are herbicide resistant.
But pigweed
problematic was the,
the most commonly classified weed
that she found in the seed bank.
-: Okay.
There's one more question regarding
the emergence of pigweed in that study.
So Colby asked,
"How long have the cover crops been in use
at those locations you studied,
you think that the amount of pigweed emergence
may be greatly decreased after eight years,
which was the,
the time pigweed seed remain viable?"
So..
yeah, so that's a question,
like how long the cover crops.
-: So that's a,
that's a great question.
So for the on-farm sites,
we measured in the after four years of cover crops.
At the experiment stations,
it was more like seven years.
So, they had been in place for several years,
but I mean, it depends, I guess,
how you might categorize what's long term.
So not eight years,
so that's interesting.
I'd be curious,
maybe I'll bug you about some of that to know
how long a
a viability in the seed bank,
but that could be something that's happening.
It's something interesting that,
I mean, it's always fun
I think when you find something you don't expect.
So, thanks for that question.
And I, I just wanna comment,
I see David Meyer in the chat saying
he believes it's possible to
think about
increasing yield,
and purposely building up the environment,
so I appreciate that sentiment,
you know, moving toward a,
you know, thinking about not just sustainability,
but, you know,
regenerating or building up.
So, thank you for that comment.
-: Okay.
So have all the
Jim have raised his hand,
and will enable your mic.
Jim: Andrea, Jim Spect here.
-: Hey Jim.
Jim: I just reviewed a paper for a publication
that comes out of Wisconsin,
where they've looked at cover crops,
and various crop rotations,
and one thing that came out of this three-year study was
the so called allelopathic effect on corn,
early corn growth,
it suppresses the growth of corn.
I've seen this myself in several Nebraska fields.
Have you seen any of that in your work?
Where the yield is also hurt pretty badly in corn?
-: I mean..
Jim: (indistinct)
-: My experience is that
the impact
on corn
is often related to
like incomplete termination,
or issues with management, right?
And that usually happens in the first few years
of learning how to make your system work,
whether that is like some issue with
planter settings,
or like again, incomplete termination.
So, I don't think it's uncommon,
I'm not gonna pretend like that doesn't happen.
And we, I haven't seen it a lot in my own work,
so I know that it is possible,
but a lot of it I think is
kind of the ramp up or learning curve
that is associated with, you know,
adding this complexity to management.
So..
Yeah, thanks for that question, Jim.
I see another question to Luci from Catherine in the chat.
-: Yes.
Yeah, so Catherine asked,
she said that you had a lot of experiential learning
experience to your class.
What key steps do you recommend for faculty members
that want you to add more
this type of experiential method to their classes?
-: Oh, that's a good question.
(Andrea laughs)
My first instinct is to say,
try and see what works,
yet, planning trips and things that are more,
and maybe starting some more simple,
you know,
the course I mentioned
kind of came with the trip expectation,
and that is complicated, right?
Getting all of those steps coordinated,
but worthwhile, right?
So I think trying,
and maybe doing something small to get started,
and not being afraid to have it be imperfect
the first time around,
that's my immediate thought,
but I probably have more things that I'll think of afterward
if you ever wanna chat more.
I would say too,
I appreciate in our department,
the collegiality and the
opportunities that we have to
discuss teaching ideas together.
So, talking to other people,
and if you have some specific ideas and,
you know, getting their input about what has worked,
or what maybe hasn't worked as well.
-: Okay.
So, I also have a question for you, Andrea,
this regarding teaching.
So I just started my position
as a distant education lecturer,
so one thing I do is I'm trying to
help faculty member to make their course available online.
And you did a great job with your 204,
and you delivered us a hybrid course.
What's your thought on doing the same
for like capstone classes?
Because, for example,
in the turf,
in the turfgrass program I'm familiar with
at the capstone class also involve a lot of like field trip,
we visit golf courses,
and we conduct a project,
and field studies in the golf course,
which present a challenge when we are trying to
convert this type of class,
deliver them online.
So with your experience,
and what your recommendation,
if we want to say make a capstone class available
as a distant course.
-: Yeah, that's a great question.
And I'm probably not the most experienced
in online teaching to say,
what I can say is that, you know,
in the fall of 2020,
the capstone course,
we unfortunately were not able to take
an extended trip in the way that we were able to in 2021,
up to,
to visit the farmers in Northeast Nebraska,
but we did get most of the class to go up for a day,
which was better than not going at all.
And I think,
I think that there,
there is almost in my mind,
at least from my experience,
like no substitute for some of that visit,
and seeing and doing in person.
I think one strategy I know that
colleagues in the department have discussed is
having students maybe do things asynchronously,
or going to have some kind of outdoor experience
that they can do on their own,
on their own time asynchronously is an approach that,
you know, create their own field trip,
or go observe something
like closer to where you are,
or that is accessible to you,
versus like
mandating that it be something that they all do
at the same time together,
or to the same place, right?
So that's.. -: Yeah.
-: That's one approach.
I do think,
I do think again,
between 2020 and 2021 in the class,
it made a difference to be able to spend more time,
and kinda have more time in person,
but we were able to..
There's some nice photos in 2020,
we did some things outside,
I recorded everything,
voice recording and,
you know, tried to be really,
I think there's just my experience
in trying to do things in a hybrid mode
over the last two years is like,
there's just,
I'm sure as, you know, too,
like the basics of teaching,
and the fundamentals of,
you know, having your course organized,
and making things easily accessible to students,
I think that does go a long way and
the hybrid environment,
I think just kind of necessitates that even more so.
Yeah, I'd be happy to brainstorm more with you,
but those are some of my immediate thoughts.
It is,
it is a challenge in that,
and especially kind of getting students to work together
in groups without
you know, always being together in person.
That, it is a challenge,
but not insurmountable.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: I was gonna add,
unless other people have questions
to Jim's allelopathy question,
as I think of it, you know,
I don't know that I've seen allelopathy,
allelopathic effects in
following cover crops,
but I think a lot of people
and it,
and I don't know the,
the paper you just reviewed,
it could be that's what it was.
I think that's kind of like hard to measure in the field.
And I think that sometimes people will claim
that's the issue when it's really,
I don't know,
potentially a water, or nitrogen,
or some kind of other reason for,
you know, emergent suppression,
something like this.
I don't always know that that's,
that's like something that I think people
find it easy to say,
and again, it could have been the case in that instance,
but I think sometimes those yield effects could be related
to, to other things.
But I do think that with management,
and figuring out the system and timing,
and again, planter settings,
all these things that most experienced
farmers and,
and researchers,
we don't see those negative impacts in time.
So, yeah.
So allelopathy gets blamed for a lot of issues
that may or may not be related to the cover crop.
Yes, she's a good person to,
to talk with about it.
-: Okay, so
Steve Bezier have a question asking,
"Are there metrics as to what should go into a cover crop?"
Is that he presume legume are aided for nitrogen,
cereal rye for its early growth, and with their survival,
what is the system for selecting a cover crop?
-: What is the system for selecting a cover crop?
So I suspect
you're
referring more to
like variety selection,
versus like goals,
but I'll, I'll try to like refer to both,
it's what I'm thinking about with your question, Steve,
that, you know,
we like when we talk to our students about cover crops
in our Cover Crop Management course,
the first and most important thing
is really what are your goals
of having the cover crop, right?
Because,
you know, I showed you this example
of where we were trying to optimize the system
for nitrogen, right?
And that required more time,
for especially the legume to grow,
and have good fall establishment,
so that it could even survive the winter.
Thankfully, our vetch did
2020 into 2021.
So I think it, you know,
designing what's the system,
it depends on what your goals are, right?
So if your goal is just to get some ground cover,
and maybe just in the fall,
and not have to deal with termination in the spring,
then something that won't overwinter is a good choice.
I think the reality is that,
and you would have good probably perspective
on this too, Steve,
that since there hasn't been,
there's a little bit more activity
around breeding for cover crops
that we haven't really
have optimized variety selection for
in nearly the way that we have for,
for cash crops, right?
And so I think in terms of the variability
of characteristics like cereal rye,
you know,
early season vigor,
surviving the winter,
starting to grow quickly in the spring,
all those things like,
you know, the ratings that various varieties might have
relative to each other,
it's just, we just don't know.
In fact, you know,
I use the example sometimes
that like lots of people will buy seeds
that are variety not stated, right?
Which you would never do that for a cash crop,
but for cover crop as something you're not,
you know, trying to spend as much money on,
it doesn't really give you the opportunity
to select variety.
So hopefully that answers your question in terms of
whether it's like the goal or the system.
Yeah, the goal, or the system,
or the variety.
Okay, David Holding has a question
about
the
Kernza grain.
How is it for gluten sensitivity?
It does have gluten.
Dough elasticity of Kernza grain.
So I can tell you that we have,
I actually made
delicious sweet potato Kernza pancakes this week,
we've made Kernza sourdough bread,
and I've had bread, muffins.
Typically,
and I don't know if this is answering your question,
'cause I'm not probably versed enough
in some of its food quality properties,
but my understanding is that
bakers,
that's kind of what we've done here
when we've made bread,
are like cutting their mix with some percent,
not necessarily a hundred percent,
in various recipes.
So
again, my pancakes were a hundred percent Kernza flour,
but
again, and I don't know if that's answering your question,
but I think as a,
a partial substitute
for baking,
I can speak to its,
its deliciousness.
So Kernza bread,
typically, Steve,
I mean, I bet you there is a hundred percent Kernza bread.
A lot of what I've had has been blended with wheat.
That's my answer to Steve's question.
I see Tom's question.
I see a higher adoption of cover crops,
and more environmentally friendly practices
on moderate size farm operations.
Do you see paths to increase adoption
across larger scale farms?
I, that's a great question, Tom.
And actually, there is some research that suggests
that larger farms are more likely to have cover crops,
that's not like every survey in,
in every place,
but that kind of does make sense to me in terms of
having the resources to be able to,
you know, make that investment.
There's of course,
a real time trade off associated with, you know,
planting and termination.
But I do see a path for,
for larger farms,
and I think there's some evidence to,
to suggest that.
-: Okay, so if there's no more question,
we will wrap it up,
and thanks again, Andrea,
and thanks again for your great presentation.
Thank you.
-: Thank you all.