Dakota Farmer

What growers can learn from farmers who are regenerating their soils.

Lon Tonneson, Editor, Dakota Farmer

December 18, 2018

3 Min Read
two men standing in young cover crop
LOOKING GOOD: A cover crop gets a good start in a no-till field. SD NRCS

If your farm or ranch has been doing well…

If it’s been a profitable business and a rewarding way of life…

If your family has been able to pass the farm or ranch on to the next generation…

Then you have a right to be proud and to feel good about what you are doing.

But maybe you could do better.

That was one of the takeaways from the 2018 Soil Health Summit held in Bismarck, N.D., in November.

Approximately 400 people from several states and provinces attended the conference, sponsored by the Burleigh County and Morton County soil conservation districts, the Natural Resources Conservation Service-North Dakota, Dakota Prairie Resource Conservation and Development Council, and the North Dakota Grazing Lands Coalition.

North Dakota — and particularly the Bismarck area — has become ground zero for soil health innovation. Several farmers and ranchers in the area are leaders in the movement. These include Gabe Brown of Bismarck, N.D.; Jerry Doan of Menonken, N.D.; and Ken Miller of Mandan, N.D. Some of the top soil health researchers and educators are located in the central Dakotas, too. They include Jay Fuhrer, North Dakota NRCS soil health specialist, Bismarck; Dwayne Beck, South Dakota State University professor and manager of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm, Pierre, S.D.; and Kris Nichols, former USDA Agricultural Research Service soil scientist at the Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory, Mandan, who now has her own consulting company.

The “you can do better” theme came from Brown — who, in a keynote address, described his soil health journey from four years of disasters in the late 1990s to consistent profits today.

He said that when he once excitedly told Fuhrer about something he had accomplished in soil health, Fuhrer congratulated him but added “you can do better.”

Brown said Fuhrer’s words stayed with him.

No matter how much you improve the soil health, you can always do better, Brown said.

After all, Mother Nature has been at it for tens of thousands of years.

Profit over yield
How do you know if you could do better?

One clue might be your corn breakeven price. One of the speakers at the summit — Russell Henrick of Hickory, N.C., — said that his breakeven for corn on a dryland no-till/cover crop field in 2018 was $1.45 per bushel. He pulled his National Corn Yield Contest entry from part of the field. It was 318 bushels per acre. The lowest-yielding area in the field ran 175 bushels per acre. His county yield average is 110 bushels per acre.

At a field day on his ranch several years ago, Brown said he didn’t have the highest corn yields in his county. But he may have had lowest breakeven price — $1.87 per bushel. Brown hasn’t used commercial fertilizer since 2007. Instead, he has relied on cover crops, mineralization of residue, soil biology and the manure from livestock that graze the cover crops. Nor does he routinely use fungicide or pesticides.

Henrick and Brown have built have up their soil so much and use cover crops and livestock grazing of cropland so extensively that they aren’t applying fertilizer, herbicides or pesticides.

“I will take profit over yield any day,” Brown said.

New movement
Soil health used to be linked to sustainable agriculture. But it clearly has evolved into something else, something that might be bigger. None of the Soil Health Summit speakers talked about being sustainable. They talked about regenerating soil and bringing it back to the level of productivity it had before it was farmed. All looked to mimic Mother Nature with no-till, plant diversity, continuous cover on the soil surface, living roots in the soil year-round and livestock.

Research is currently being done on Brown’s ranch to determine if a healthy soil increases the nutrient density of food. Brown hopes the results will eventually lead to regenerative farmers earning premiums for the food they produce. One day, there may even be regenerative food label. Farmers who are involved in soil health now have a head start on being able to capture those premiums, he said.

Watch a video of Brown’s presentation below.

About the Author(s)

Subscribe to receive top agriculture news
Be informed daily with these free e-newsletters

You May Also Like