Building Soil Health with Cover Crops: A Tennessee Farmer's Approach

0:38 Dale, did you get that length then? Yes, yes, thank you. Okay, perfect. Yep, already set them on. Very good. I'll give it about 30 more seconds and we will get started.

0:59 Adam, one question for you: as far as if there are questions that we don't get to at the end, is there what's the best way to get those questions to you? Do you want me to give out your email address or do you want them to come to me and I can forward them to you? It's—I've got my email and contact info at the end of the presentation. I'm fine with folks reaching out to me however, or you can keep a list of them and I'll get some answers and you can send them out to folks. Just one way or another, don't let anything go unanswered. Perfect. Yep, that sounds good.

1:32 Well, we got 5:31 here, so we're going to go ahead and get started. As always, we are really excited to have you guys. This is week five, I believe, or maybe even six on season two of our webinar series, and really excited about our guest from Tennessee. I don't really want to spoil the intro or anything, but we've got a treat for you.

2:00 Basically what we've got is you guys are all muted right now. We're not going to be able to see you, but if you do have questions during this presentation, you can go ahead and type those out either in the chat bar or in the Q&A portion. Adam has a presentation he's going to go for about 40-45 minutes, and he mentioned earlier that he really thrives on Q&A. So if you guys have any questions for Adam, you can type those out and we'll get to those right around about 6:15 and wrap up sometime around 6:30.

2:30 With that, Keith, do you want to talk a little bit about why Adam is on here this evening and why we're so excited? Thanks. No, we're really excited to have Adam on. Adam is one of my favorite guys to listen to. I was thinking about this earlier today, and I was telling Adam too that you know we had a whole list of potential speakers and then we kind of voted on it internally as a sales team and we told him that he won. He won the popular vote to get invited to Beyond.

2:57 But I think with the reason that myself and so many other people like listening to Adam, three reasons: Number one, he's got a tremendous passion for soil health and for the resource, and you'll be able to hear that and see that, and I think even through Zoom you'll be able to feel that. That passion just comes through really loud and clear. Number two, he is not speaking from a theoretical standpoint; he's speaking from practical experience because it truly could be said he is from the government, but he is here to help you. And he is not just advising his farmers in his county from the desk; he's out in the field with him. He's adjusting equipment; he's right out there with him in the dirt and he's got his boots dirty, and I really appreciate that about him.

3:44 And then the third thing is he's just funny. He's just a hoot to listen to, and maybe it's just because we don't hear that southern drawl up here so much or some of the little sayings that he'll have, but it's—I listen to his talks with a smile and a chuckle all the time, and I think you will too. So I appreciate that about him as well. I always learn something; I always have a few laughs. So great combination to have.

4:07 So Adam, we look forward to hearing your talk and interacting with you in the Q&A session at the end here. So appreciate you joining us tonight. Well, thank you all for having me. First off, it's an honor—honor to even be asked, and it sounds like you all built it up pretty good. We'll see how it goes from here. I'm going to go ahead and, if it's all right, I'm going to try to share a screen here and see how this works out, okay?

4:42 All right, Dale. I can still see you. If you can see a PowerPoint that come up, can you give me a nod? Okay, let's get on our end. Yep, all right, sounds good. Well, folks, appreciate everybody having me here. Like he said, I'm pretty passionate about what I do, and they asked me to do a little talk here tonight.

5:04 What I'm going to call this is transitioning from something into higher functioning agroecological systems. And the reason why I use that word 'something' is because I don't even know who I was talking to here or what stage you're in, but we're all starting from something—whether it be a full tillage scenario, or you know we've been no-tilling for a long time, or maybe we're doing a lot of regenerative ag. But I mean, we're all transitioning from something, and we're going to continue to transition no matter what we do. So it's kind of just a little bit of reason why I titled this the way I did, because there's sometimes something in a title.

5:42 Hold on just a second. Slideshow ain't working. That figures. Well, maybe I'll run it this way.

6:07 Okay, well I just apologize about the technical difficulties. But just a little bit where I chase this passion and where it comes from. And in the yellow circle right there, that's Coffee County, Tennessee located in southern middle Tennessee. And it's just a special place. And I'm just going to come straight out and be honest—we're pretty spoiled right here where we live and where we farm at what we're trying to do.

6:34 We don't battle latitude, we don't battle precipitation. I mean, it's just a good place for stuff to grow. We got good inherent soils right there within that little yellow polygon. We kind of call this area little Iowa. You go around us in any counties, you don't see the big row crop, the big production agriculture. It's just a special little heart here in the valley with good inherent soils. We average somewhere in a neighborhood of 58 to 62 inches of rain a year, so we get plenty of moisture and pretty much we've got a long growing season.

7:13 Right now tonight we're supposed to get down to about 18 degrees here, so everybody's panicked and there's no bread, no milk or anything in the stores. We had about a half inch of snow today, so this county here is turned upside down. But there's about 53,000 acres of reported crop land here in the county that I work for for NRCS, and I've been back here working in the field since 2013.

7:39 Out of those 53,000 acres, I'm going to say somewhere over 52,000 of them are annually in no-till country. Folks were no-tilling here from the inception in the early 70s and they've stuck with the no-till. And the reason why is just because of our climate. We get enough growing degrees that we get enough winter weeds that we leak enough carbon in the system that stand-alone no-till was pretty good to us.

8:10 When I came back to the county, no-till is what I knew and I thought things were right from that. But then I got introduced to soil health and got to thinking that there might be a little bit more. And since we started here in 2013, out of those 53,000 acres, we're averaging a little better than 30,000 of them are in cover systems—primarily corn and soybeans with diverse cover crops growing in the winter. And out of that, about 20 to 25,000 acres of what we've got in cover, we actually manage the biomass and manage it to a point where we got crimpable biomass going into corn and soybeans.

8:52 Starting out, started with a few farmers, and now pretty much if you've not tried cover crops or soil health in Coffee County, you just pretty much ran from me. We've highly incentivized this program over the years. We're up to where we've spent, we've invested about 10 million dollars of financial assistance through into soil health through EQIP, CSP, state cost share. We really don't discriminate where the dead presidents come from—it all spends just about the same. Bought roller crimpers for farmers to use, feeding implements, so we've tried to make it as easy to transition financially as we could.

9:40 But one thing I realized once I got back to the county is I kind of had to look a little bit about where I'd been, where I was now, and where I thought we could go, comparing that to our farm systems. And I think just probably if you're listening to this webinar, we've all started over here on the left in some type of tillage system with that old Bel Air. And folks that just can't put any planer—that's just soil degradation, all right. Then we moved into no-till. And I worked for the Natural Resource Conservation Service. I think this agency does a good job and it's got a good meaning, but now me personally, there's nothing wrong with conservation, okay. Conservation's fine, but when we think about conservation, what we're thinking about is we're just conserving something at the state it's in. It's not going to get any worse, it's not going to get much better.

10:39 And for me professionally and personally as a producer, I have a problem conserving something that I know is in a degraded state, that's not functioning at the ability that it can. But the beauty, no matter if you're sitting here in Tennessee or you're anywhere—it don't matter where you're at—as long as the sun's shining, that field, your farm, your operation has the ability to be rejuvenated. And when I'm talking about rejuvenation, I'm talking about taking a resource, the soil, and getting it functioning as designed. It was designed to function a certain way. It may not be the way that we think we want to make it function, but it is designed to naturally function the same way.

11:25 Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every field we've got in the

11:31 Is at a full state of rejuvenation. It's not, but we move past no-till and we're going to the next step. And the way we've done that has came along, that we real quickly realized, and I think this holds true for anywhere, that the rejuvenation of our soil it does not start with the implementation of principles, okay with planting cover crops or buying no-till equipment. That's not where it starts. It starts with we in our mind have got to start understanding ecological functions, okay? Because then if we start understanding how things are designed to work, then we can make the decisions on what we want to do. And it's real simple.

12:19 Some of you at the no-till on the plains, I gave a whole talk on knowing your why before your health. And I think it's really important that we have to know why we're doing something before we ever think about how we're going to do it. And there's a reason why it's kind of hard for us to know what you know what does our soil need to function? Heck, I mean you can type it into Google, and Google can't even tell you the answer. They don't tell you what the soil needs to function. These are the actual what pops up when you type this into Google. It just tells you what the functions of the soil are supposed to be. And I think a lot of our mind that's the way we work. We just expect our soil to be able to do something because we don't have no understanding of what it really needs to function.

13:06 And the main mission link in that is we don't view our soil. We've not been trained to view our soul as the living ecosystem it is. I wasn't trained that way. What brought up that weight didn't manage the soil professionally for a long time because I did not focus on the understanding of its how it's a living ecosystem. And it's so simple for us to look at any other living critters. We can look at humans, cows, even a sasquatch, and we can easily mentally picture what does that living critter need to be able to function properly? And we have an understanding that if it doesn't have what it needs, it's not going to function properly. You know, if you're wondering what that second picture is, you all may not never seen that, but that's actually the state bird of Alabama. And we can even look at that critter and understand what it needs to function. But if I just simply show you a picture of the soil, man, it's a mindset change we've got to start thinking about what does this living ecosystem need to function?

14:17 And it's real simple. You know, there's a lot of talk and a lot of things, and there's a lot of things that we can do to enhance the function of this ecosystem, but you can boil it down to just three things that it has to have to function. It's got to be fed, it's got to be watered, and it's going to have a static address. And the key to this is it's got to have this every day, not just during the growing season. Now this is going to go on during the cash crop season a lot, right? Probably going to be a lack of diversity, but it's going to be fed. It's going to have a chance to be watered, and it ain't going nowhere as bad, right? But we've got to start concentrating on doing that every day.

15:01 So you know, we've been no-tilling up here in coffee county since Moby Dick was a sardine. And you know, we thought we had this thing licked. No-till had been good to us. But as I started looking at these fields, it was quick to determine these fields were not functioning as they were designed. And see, I've been a professional symptom addresser. That's what I was trying to do is address symptoms instead of fixing problems. And that gets us into a false security because if I look at these long-term no-till fields, been in no-till 25, 30, 40 years, all right, they're starved. Well, that's not a problem, that's a symptom. The problem is the sun shines every day, but we ain't got nothing out there growing to absorb it, all right? We've got erosion. That's a symptom. The problem is our surface. If we got a naked surface, the same thing for vertical erosion. I don't care if your field has no slope, that's perfectly flat. If it ain't covered, it's erodible. All that what pore space it may have, when that rainfall falls on it, breaks apart those microscopic soil particles where there's no aggregate stability, and it starts infiltrating down vertically. What pore space you've got sealed off? So every field's erodible. There's no such thing in my mind as non-highly erodible versus highly erodible fields. That's a false security. We had low infiltration. And folks, these have been no-till for 30 years and still look at the problems we have. Compaction is not a problem, or it's a symptom. The problem is we don't have any aggregate stability. And then we didn't have any biological diversity.

16:49 Five things for 50 years corn soybeans and then we grew them a bit chicken wheat and buttercup. Luckily we had enough, it was warm enough and have enough moisture that we could grow that in the winter.

16:59 So don't start addressing symptoms on your problem. Go on your farm, go ahead and let's think about what's the problem and let's fix it. The symptoms take care of yourself.

17:11 Now one thing that helped me do this is, as you hear me talk, you'll see I kind of get off the wall on some of my thought process sometimes. But I don't like to think in cycles anymore and the main reason is cycles are meant to be broken. And if we think in cycles, we are automatically setting ourselves up to have broken pieces on our farm.

17:36 But if we start thinking about flows, all right, flows of carbon, flows of nutrients, flows of moisture. See the river, it may be at a high flow sometime and it may be at a low flow, but there's usually going to be a little bit of flow going on. And we never know how much it's going to be, but we're always going to be able to flow something. And I think if we'll start thinking about flows on our farm, flows of life, flows of nutrients, flows of energy, I think it'll help us understand our lives better.

18:11 Another, you know, the main goal in this is when we get our soils functioning, we get results. Okay, and I've got all these goods listed: good moisture, good temperature, good carbon flow, good, good, good, good, good. We just stacked these goods, folks. Sometimes they're going to be great, sometimes they're going to be lesser. But when our soil is functioning, is designed, it's going to be as good as it can be at that climatic condition, whether we're in higher rainfall, higher temperature, low rainfall, low temperature, wherever we're at. At this point in time, it's going to be functioning as good as it can be.

18:53 And what this, the end result of this is we get resilience. You know, we'll have droughts, we'll have cold spells. But if I, but how many natural ecosystems next to the fields you all have farmed have failed during these times? Now they may have not produced as many acorns or many hickory nuts or they may have not new tree grows or whatever. But did the whole system collapse like it did in our fields? And that's what we want to get away from. We want to fill the bins in good years, bad years, and in between years. We want to always try to be able to fill the bins.

19:33 Now soil health, you know, it's been a buzzword and it's an important word. But I try to keep it real simple and I'll tell you how simple it is. My son Brady Daugherty, he's my oldest son, but when he was nine years old, I asked him what soil health was and he explained it and drew this out to me. Now don't get me wrong, he's probably a little bit more brainwashed than most nine-year-olds are on soil health and virginity bag, but he drew this up. And I think this, I use this in about every presentation I give.

20:03 It's a real simple system that's designed that we're put here to manage properly. Sun shines, the plant absorbs that, gives off some oxygen, it leaks some sugar in the ground. The bugs want that sugar, they eat it, and the plant and they exchange nutrients or whatever the plant may need. That's how the system's designed to work. And the problem we have is I asked Brady, I said Brady, what happens if we don't have a plant growing? He said well Dad, it won't work. And for you know, I'm not saying that we have to accept it or we have to agree with it, but if a nine-year-old can understand it, I think we can too.

20:51 Folks, no matter where we're sitting at tonight, listen to this: we all have these commonalities. Okay, I'm in corn and bean country and cover crop, no-till country, and we are all farming fields that have some level of degradation. Some are worse than others, but the thing about it is they all share this potential. Okay, but where the potential gets killed is we can't progress positively if we're in denial of these ways.

21:21 We can't be in denial that our field's not covered, that our field doesn't have any diversity. We cannot be in denial, this okay? It's a hard pill to swallow, but it's the truth. And I think a lot of it, you know, a lot of these campaigns have come out. You know, the shovel was the most important thing you can have. You know, and I like it, it's cool, but the most really important tool that we can have for soil, for our farm, our community, the region, the whole worldwide, it's not a shovel. We can dig all the holes we want, but we got to look in the mirror. What are we going to learn? What are we going to do about what we learned? See the whole responsibility in this lies with us voluntarily with us, you know? And I don't want to see us where we get where it gets more regulated than what it may already be. But if we can't take our responsibility and do the right thing, and here's the beauty about it: doing the right thing, it would be a hard pill to swallow if it meant that we couldn't be productive, that we would, that our livelihoods go down. But when we build a resilient.

22:32 Resource is not only better for our operation but it's better for everybody. So it's got a place, and that's a lot about the whys. Why I saw this in Coffee County, why our fields weren't working, and it all came from education. It all got built from education. I'm not going to tell nobody what to do. I want to send out my education, share education with them and let us understand our whys.

23:04 Because the how is the easy part. When you really are committed to understanding and want to make things function properly, the how is real easy. Now it's going to be different from a lot of us but it's simply by just understanding how this resource is designed to function. Okay, and we implement the management work, promotes these functions and we dispose or wean off the ones that degrade. Okay, I'm not one of these cold turkey folks. I like to start weaning off some of this stuff because we've got to do this while maintaining or increasing our bottom line.

23:45 Our billfolds are at the forefront of importance on this whole journey. Now if it was just about soil health, I'd go here in Coffee County, I'd go plant a winter cover crop, let it reach its state, cramp it right down, plant a summer crop, and I'd keep cranking that and put a few cattle on it and my soil health would go out the roof. But my billfold would be flat.

24:12 So the way I really worked with a lot of producers with this, and you know we've all got our opinions but I think this is kind of pretty proven here in Coffee County, is we focused. I didn't go to folks and start preaching reduction, reduction, reduction. Okay, let's start maximizing this stuff that you all are putting out there anyways. If we can build the biology, if we can build the herd, if we can keep moisture, if we can keep aggregation, if we can keep that soil cool, you don't still be putting on some of your stuff, let's capitalize on it. Let's start filling the bins big time.

24:52 Okay, well that's kind of my deal as I've been looking on the maximizing the formulations. We've moved away from the dry fertilizer and all this stuff and now we're real concentrated on inferior fertility, chelated nitrogen, sugars, looking at stuff that's easier for the biology to be able to synthesize to put into a fruit that turns into money in our billfold as opposed to some of the other formulations, and it's my primarily a focus on reduction of salts. That's primarily what I'm talking about there.

25:27 You know I take a little grief from this but I'm not found a way to starve a profit out of a garden by just reducing inputs. I mean you take something degraded and then cut out the crack that it's used to, yeah, I mean it's not going to produce results. So it is a process I've been involved in for seven years now and we're just now in some fields really making the turn where we can start even thinking about significant reductions.

25:59 Early on in this journey, something I realized here in our high yield in corn and well for us it's high yielding when I'm talking corn. The guys that are doing a top-notch job of this, we're in excess of 200 bushel corn here in Tennessee and 70-80 bushel soybeans are common talk around the coffee shop. But nitrogen's the last for us to go on our corn crop. That's where we still get a big return on investment out of that. But folks, the thing that is not the only inputs that we have. What we realize first off is our most profitable when we're talking reductions are gonna come out of the tips of these sprayers because we're here in Palmer Pigweed country. Our no-till beans were averaging four to five trips across those in some cases to control Palmer. Soybean or corn we're seeing two to three sprays a year depending on the situation.

27:00 But when you go in and start crimping biomass and grow corn, and the next time you know the only time that sprayer sees the fields in a burn down, and then you come back with one post on soybeans. That's starting to reduce those are inputs as well. And everybody in Coffee County they'll take one trip a year, they'll go down, find the closest sand they come to and then all the SUVs will have a salt light sticker on the back of their SUVs. And you know it's getting to a point no-till that I was going to go ahead and retire from NRCS and build sprayer life stickers for everybody to put on the vehicle because that's all we done was ride sprayers around. But we got out of that so I had to keep working because I didn't hit the.

27:46 Market on getting the sprayer life stickers for everybody to put on their car. So everybody's kind of seen these principles, and these are kind of mine and my lane in terms of how I like to approach when I'm working producers and stuff or explaining transitioning from no-till or tillage into these systems.

28:08 We've got to keep the soil covered, okay? First and foremost, if we're not taking the energy out of the raindrop, destruction's happening. Living plants, you know, just like my son said, if we ain't got something there absorbing the energy, this ain't going to work. It drives everything. It feeds the house.

28:28 I am a big believer in diversity. I do not understand all of these synergistic deals. I probably never will, but I do not defy nature. Nature does not lie to us. So I pump as much diversity as we can. Like I said, we're spoiled here. We can grow just about anything.

28:50 Every year we're putting warm seasons in with our cool season mixes. We have the opportunity because of our latitude and growing climate that diversity is something that's real easy for us.

29:05 And then you're probably seeing the principle of eliminate or reduce disturbance, tillage, however it's worded. I like to look at it from a different standpoint. I want somebody to understand what tillage does, and even more so than that, I want you to understand what it takes to restore those detrimental effects that that tillage event had.

29:31 If you get to where you understand that, then I think the tillage problem will take care of itself. Now, one thing that does, you know, it's hard for me to swallow, especially in our rotations or where I farm and across the biggest part of where the biggest part of our cropland is, is quit trying to justify this tillage. Lord, I have heard of all the reasons and all the things, but I'm going to tell you the only function it ever has or it ever will, and I wish I could change it.

30:02 I wish every once in a while we could just go out and have a little recreational tillage to blow some steam off. It'd be good for us, but the only thing it does is release carbon from our soils. It will make a field smoother every once in a while, but that, guys, that's all it does. It is going to release carbon.

30:22 You know, and we're looking, you know, some of y'all may be up from the corn belt. You know, if it worked and if it had a positive effect, those native eight, seven, eight percent organic matter soils, they wouldn't be at three and four now. So it does not do anything to promote any function of the soil.

30:46 And then I really like when we can integrate livestock. That's just that soil health graduate level, but man, our fields have really shown the fields that we've integrated livestock on. They whip everybody else's tails. You know, it's just magic's way nature was designed to work. You just cannot replace a ruminant. Okay, so take you down real quick, just a little bit about where did we start at?

31:11 Okay, here we were coming out of long-term no-till. We moved into low ball mass covers, came out there and smoked it and burned it down before it scared us any. So that's where we started at. And then here we are in first year doing some of that. You know, there we got a new roller crimper. This producer did. We just had to use it. There is absolutely no reason not getting a bit of benefit out of rolling that cover right there.

31:40 Might get lucky and kill a southern prairie bowl or get unlucky and run over a skunk, but you know, I just leave that slide in there to show that you know it's not really doing anything. Don't have any problems planting any. The only problems you're going to have, no matter where, if you're planting into something like that, as long as the tractor starts, you're going to be fine. No problem with that.

32:04 So that was good, kind of like what we saw, but look at our resource right there. Remember when I got back to talking about the problems, not the symptoms but the problems? I'm still naked, right? Look at those algal blooms right there where I'm wasting nitrogen. So I still got problems right there. Is it better than stand-alone no-till? Yeah, you bet it is, but we can still do more. Still got more potential.

32:28 Learn real quick it's hard to rejuvenate the resource when you're planting by the calendar. And trust me, there is real peer pressure in farming. But the calendar should not be dictating when you plant. You should plant when, if you're serious about this, when the conditions are right, because why are we doing this? So we can manage and be resilient when the weather is not the way we want it in a perfect condition.

32:58 So year two, you know, the way human nature is, if a little bit is good then a little bit more is better. So we got started planting green.

33:06 Planting corn and soybeans and everything that look like this just leaving it standing running through there. Still had no problem the bench and stuff. It hadn't got big enough for its wrapping around or anything like that so we moved into that grounds covered a little bit more. That's better than what it was the year before but still look at that carbon I got standing up.

33:30 You go look at nature, that's really not the way nature's carbon layer is designed to feed the soil, is it? You know, most of those high carb, high carbon nitrogen ratio residues you're seeing right there, they're—it takes a fungal component in the microbial community to really synthesize and break that down and get that stirring. So I don't have the fungus up there floating around the air.

33:57 Go right on down the road the same year. Cover crops at the exact same state but just a little bit of change in management makes all the difference in the world. And this has just been a journey of the aha moments for me in real life. You know, I've seen it on YouTube and heard about folks doing it but it's different when you're doing it on your own and doing it where it hadn't been done before. That plant's great. That hybrid comes up equals sunlight.

34:23 Now look at the way our soil is covered. We've got the roof on the house. We're taking the energy out of the raindrop. We have the ability to keep it cool. When the rains come we have the ability to let them infiltrate in the ground. Move right on in, along year three. Just, you know, if a little bit's good a little more is better, so a lot more ought to be a lot better, right?

34:51 So we started moving into this and now this is pretty much typically what you see in our county on about 20, 25,000 acres a year. This is how we're planting corn and beans. We're not planting April first anymore. But you know, when you get to talking about cover crops and all that business, you can sit there on that green cover seed calculator and come up with a perfect mix, get that thing planted early, design the perfect mix but then go out there and lose all potential in the way you manage it.

35:29 Here in my neck of the woods we can put on more biomass between March 15th and April 15th than we can between September 1st and March 15th. So the key is we've got to let this stuff grow enough that we're able to give our field the potential to be able to function as designed through the cash crop season. And when you get into stuff like this, you got to be careful because by the time we got done right here we ran six Sasquatches out of that field right there. That's where the Scotch nation happened at in that field.

36:01 But you know, you look at that and man, that looks pretty intimidating because if we took that 3,600 Kinsey into that field right there without getting it on the ground we went about 50 foot and for the next three hours all I'd be doing is getting cussed while I'm trying to get everything untangled so we could run 50 more feet. But so you get that on the ground and it really changes our perspective of how we see it, manageability of it.

36:28 But folks, being successful and planting is not going through a field and not tangling up the planter, getting stuff wrapped around. We actually, you know, my folks were not going to settle for, 'Yeah, dirty all this soil health and bugs and stuff you're talking about, that's pretty cool, but you know we still gotta grow a crop.' So they weren't gonna sacrifice stand. You know, if they wanted—they're shooting for 32, 34,000 plants on their corn. I got—that's what they wanted so we had to make sure that we precision planted this and got this the right way.

37:00 But you take something that's very intimidated, it's got—you know you barely can walk through it—turn it into this. And then you come back here and now you got to start on 80 bushel beans that didn't see nothing except for a combine. We start doing that we start making some money. Okay, then we got into some of this rank stuff on corn.

37:24 Now you look at that and that looks like that's quite a bit of biomass and it's really not that much biomass, it's just tall. But you know folks, I do not want my corn crops starting out in something like that. You know, there's no way that we're not going to take a yield hit when we got spindly corn trying to come up through that and start setting ears and stuff.

37:45 So we got to rolling a bunch after we planted. All right, and you know I've seen no negative results on us rolling, crimping after we planted as long as we don't get going on the same road. So just in general we'll usually go in there after we plant and we'll take off on about a 10 to 15 degree angle different what we planted just make sure we ain't putting something right down the road right there. But you know, this is just common what we—

43:31 Look at the forest that's a template, that's what we hadn't messed with, and then look at our no-till systems compared to our conventional till systems on temperature. And then look at the more we start managing, mimicking nature, and managing our cover and getting the biomass down. Look how we start mimicking nature and look at our soil temperatures. So when it's 92 degrees outside, 95 degrees outside, and we're keeping the soil temperatures in the 80s, we can still conserve moisture, we can still grow a crop.

44:06 Infiltration I think is one of the key indicators that you'll see. You know, luckily one of the main things our system's lacking is moisture. Well, one of the best things, one of the first things that comes back into the system is aggregation. We're able to start getting some water in the ground. And our conventional till fields around this area, they always stink. They're less than one inch per hour. Long-term no-till, going from one inch per hour into 30 years of no-till, gained us one to two inches per hour on infiltration. We doubled that in one year of cover crops. As after year three when we increased the biomass, we had fields that were averaging in the 20 inch per hour. So going from two to twenty in a three-year period, that's pretty significant for me.

44:52 Here in our no-till country or some of our rolling land, you know we always got these little washes in the valleys and stuff. And just magically around that between what year one and two when we started getting in that four inch per hour, all these washes stopped. One thing about infiltration rates folks, they're very dynamic. You know, when we're saturated they're going to be lower, or dry we're not able to really get some water in the ground. But these trends are static. Okay, I've seen this over and over: that the conventional is always going to be bad, long. And no-till field a little bit better, and our cover fields are always going to be better during any condition.

45:33 This one was something that we didn't think about much and I don't think folks really think about it until they really get in the system. Now keep in mind I'm talking about green planet covers, not after you burnt covers down. Because once the cover's been terminated, then you're just dealing with climatic condition and sunshine on controlling moisture from that point on. But when we're dealing with green covers, here in our neck of the woods when the no-till and the conventional ground's too heavy to plant, we're planting when everything's prime and everybody's happy, of course we're planting. And then these moisture robbing cover crops that we think about, when the no-till and the conventional ground is too dry, guess what we're doing? We're still planting. Is that ground dry? Yeah, it's ground dry, but it's also very aggregated and very receptive to these no-till planters. We can still plant in it.

46:26 Not only does this give us a lot a bigger logistic window, but the conditions no matter where we're at, they're more optimal now. I'm not saying when we're mudding in corn and these cover crops, it's not heavy and we're not mutting in a little bit of corn, but it's a lot better than if we was mudding in corn and conventional or no-till. The same thing when we're planting in dry conditions, I'm not saying that our cover fields are just perfect, no. But we can get a planter in the ground on them. Not only are these times get better for planting, but then let's shift forward into the growing season. No matter what times we're in, wet times, good times, dry times, my resource is still going to be as productive as it can at that time as compared to our other systems. And the wet, good and the dry, I mean that's about all the times when you think about it. That covers about all of them.

47:20 Well close up here because I'm going to assume that we've got some folks that are not in a 60 inch rainfall environment like we are. But no matter what, it takes moisture to grow these covers. I'm not going to dispute that point, but we cannot conserve or regulate moisture without covers. The only other way we can do it is go out there and maybe blow and mulch our fields. So you know it cost about eight hundred dollars an acre to put a quarter inch of mulch on a field. So that's going to get pretty, it's going to be hard for us to make that pencil out. So it's a lot cheaper for us to grow the covers.

48:03 The field has got to be covered to have any ability to regulate or manage moisture. And then let's think about it from this standpoint: in a non-irrigated environment, everything I do is dry land. But I don't have any ability to manage when it rains. But I do have the ability to manage the vapor transpiration. Even in an irrigated environment, I have the ability to manage both, and that's the best of both worlds right there. But we'll run this irrigation just to watch it go up in the air.

48:38 But we got a lot more days with potential to lose moisture than we ever do to gain any moisture. That's where we can come in with having our heads that you know the silver bullet right there is our ability to think to where we can regulate that.

49:00 You know what we don't do anything fallow around here. So you know as I started traveling the country I never really understood fire fallow or the principles behind it, but where does that mimic any natural principle? Where in the world does fallow mimic any natural principle because every one of those fallow fields that we think that we can manage better nature design think about what they were before we decided we can manage them better.

49:31 Okay now I'm going to end with this right here because this might bring up some questions and this is from my neck the woods but I think it's also a mind shift change that we all need to think about. And I could care less about organic matter as a metric of success okay. I would rather us concentrate on the flow of energy in the system.

49:56 All right these fields these high producing fields that I'm talking about in my neck of the woods we're at 1.8 to 2.2 percent organic matter all right. I'm not seeing any big strides in increases in organic matter over a seven year period. Now where we've integrated livestock I've seen some fields it's had some small ticks in it. So if the metric of measuring using organic matter is the a big metric of success my advice to you is if your biology does not go does not hibernate if you don't get cold enough where it freezes out where my biology it never hibernates I've got to feed it all the time so I don't look at organic matter as a metric of my success all that means to me is if I can make big gains in organic matter then that means my biology is hibernating and not eating up the energy in the system now don't get me wrong I want to have high organic matter but it's going to come with some equilibrium that we've not reached so I'm more concerned about making sure that I've got granny sitting there cooking three four squares a day that no matter what everything I'm needing is provided for instead of worrying about my pantry down here in Tennessee.

51:24 Because even our analytical data showed that we we can pump so much biology that it's hard for us to even provide enough sugar to keep everything going with the biological populations that we carry over from our growing season in cover crop season where we're really growing in into those times when we're not pumping as much sugar into the ground during when we were not actively growing. Luckily for us it's not much it changed some years we have hard winter some years we don't have much of a winter at all but I've really started looking at the flow of energy because that's that's kind of what needs to happen in the system.

52:02 So with that folks I humbly thank you for your time. This is I wish all of you it's the best in this it's going to be a journey for all it's not going to be the same. In any ovens there's my contact information feel free to reach out to me at any time. I eat sleep and breathe this stuff and always enjoy talking to folks about it one one short sharpens the other. But with that Mr. Noah I'm going to turn it back over to you and try to minimize this thing where I can see the screen okay.

52:40 Adam thank you so much a lot of comments on the graph. That was pretty funny I should have had my audio on for half of that because I was laughing through most of it so I appreciate that. We do have a couple questions here so guys like I said if you have questions we do have a little bit of time here at the end if you want to ask those the first question is the planting green in general do you use row cleaners or a wavy coulter or any type in front of the opening blade.

53:11 Done look done a little bit over all of it. In general the common planter here will be that we'll have a 13 wave 13 wave coulter on the front or a bubble coulter a lot of spring load or spring down pressure moving into more hydraulic down pressure. Row cleaners not not so much most of our biomass is getting big enough that we cannot run the row cleaners unless we crimp ahead of the planter okay so we started out with the row cleaners when we were doing basically what I call enhanced no-till planting in the low biomass stuff but once we started getting into the bigger stuff the row cleaners kind of went away and now we've actually moved into no coulters on the planter. We're finding under some plant conditions that just a straight double disc opener on our green and blue planters is working fine and even better than a.

54:12 Culture on some of the other systems, which of course now on the red planters run the offset, opening disk. You know it has no issues.

54:23 This is from Jimmy Evans, Adam. What do you attribute your success to? We see pockets across the country like Coffee County, but how do we mimic what you're doing to narrow this space in between those pockets? We also, I'm so proud of you and your success with the producers there.

54:39 Well, thanks Jimmy. I guess just knowing people like Jimmy Evans helps, being able to pick his brain. But to answer the question more seriously, I think it's all based off education. I really think I don't think that there is a producer across this nation that does not want to be more productive, do the right things, and invest in their land. However, I think there's a disconnect still yet on how. And that's why I tried to emphasize on this, on how the resource is designed to function. And I think once we as humans have an understanding of how the resource is designed to function, then all the hows come into play.

55:28 I think that partnerships and professionals such as NRCS, ag extension, I think we have a real responsibility and a role to work with producers on this. I think we have a real responsibility to be aggressive in seeking financial assistance. It was a no-brainer in Coffee County, Tennessee. It's easy here, I'm just going to be honest. It is easy to do what we're doing as compared to other geographic regions. And I think that's where investment from the community and ag industries and stuff like that really need to work with producers. But to answer the question, it goes back into a lot of education. And then you got to have producers who are willing to listen, maybe willing to make some changes. God bless me in a special place. I mean, producers here in Coffee County, you know, they've been pretty innovative as far as no-till long before we ever introduced the concepts of soil health. So you know, a lot of that has a lot to do with it. But I still think there's a wholesomeness in the soil, in our souls, that we want to do the right thing. And a lot of times it's just being exposed to a way that is not only better for our livelihood but it's better for everybody in general.

56:54 Thanks Adam. Fred asked, what is the typical rotation of cash crops and covers in your area? Okay, typical, we're in a corn soybean rotation, some wheat. But corn, we're geared up trying to get on some of our upper ground. That's mid-April is when we try to shoot for. Hopefully what we're looking at is ideally April 15th. If we got soil temperature 58 to 62 degrees, we're probably going to be hitting the ground running. We'll be looking at growing 108 to 113 day corn. That usually, you know, first of September, we're getting the combines fired up. That'll be followed by typically chasing the combine sowing covers. We started out as all drilled. Now we look at a lot of other things where we're running broadcasting the seed, running some crumbler baskets. We'll run roller crimpers, just something to get the stalks down, maybe fluff the residue a little bit. Doing some of that, these cover crop blends will have eight to 12 things in them, pretty much typically now. And then we'll come back in and be looking at late April, May first of May-ish, being getting started on our full season beans. We will go down as low as a 2.8 on some beans, but we, you know, our full seasons are running a 2.8 to a mid-four. Where we got wheat in the rotation, chasing those with wheat beans. And then we stay warm enough usually that our wheat bee double crop beans will come off late October, first of November. And those covers there, if we've not airplaned them on before, we can get those drilled in and still get a pretty good stand long as we let that biomass grow long enough for the next year's corn.

58:48 Cotton, we'll mix in cotton in the rotation. I don't have a whole lot of cotton. The county south of me has got quite a bit of cotton. And the guys that are doing, going down there, you know, we're looking at running the same deal. Back to road cleaners, most of the folks I'm dealing with that are running cotton, we are using road cleaners on those. Hoping to start looking in on cotton, looking at reversing hood sprayers and going in mid-March and stuff when that cover crop sticks 12 inches tall in some places and burning down strips on 30 inch strips, about six inches wide, to get away from the road cleaners, to build to come in and no-till the cotton. It's a little bit more finicky. It ain't as vigorous as our corn and soybeans coming up, getting started on this, but it can be done.

59:52 One more question you guys. I think Greg asked if you could go back to that last slide. I'm not sure if that's for the contact information, but we probably won't have time to get to all these. So if you do have questions, Adam did say that you can send him an email so I'll let him put that up here. And while you do that, a question from Jillian says do you ever do a SAP analysis to see if there are any mineral constraints that might enable you to get higher levels of photosynthesis?

1:00:24 We have started. Had a few producers that have sent in some SAP analysis. We've done tissue analysis for a while. SAP analysis, that's something new enough to us. I just basically understand the processes of analysis and I don't have enough personal experience with it other than just regurgitating some of the others I've heard talk about it. I like the SAP analysis ideal. I think it can be very beneficial for us.

1:01:00 One thing that I have noticed over our fields, and I attribute a lot of this to the diversity that we're planting because we'll take analytical soil tests pre-planting, two or three weeks prior to planting when the cover is really starting to grow, and man we're deficient in our traditional analytic tests. But then somehow our crops don't show any of these deficiencies. And once we start getting into this year six, seven, and we start getting some fungal component back in this soil, this is the stuff that the smart people know, but I don't understand all the processes. But I know we are starting to be able to tap into this organic pool because if not, from traditional thinking, we would have to be showing deficiencies in these cash crops we're growing. Our climate is allowing us, and by managing these carbon nitrogen ratios on these covers, I don't know if it happens five days later or 20 days later, but somehow nature's working with this and we're not seeing the deficiencies that we would see in a standalone no-till or conventional that had the same analytics pulled on it.

1:02:28 We send off these cover crop samples and it's pretty obvious where it is. It's all in the biomass. But it's pretty amazing how quick nature's taking back over and the interactions are happening. We're not seeing these deficiencies. One of the things that we have seen, and this kind of gets into the SAP analysis a little bit, the SAP analysis will be predicting what we're seeing later on. But some of these fields that we really got cranking on these corn hybrids, we'll be cutting corn at 16, 18, and this corn looks like silage. The stalks, the plant health on it. You know, to me that's just, I'm kind of a simple man. When it's taken me a lot of horsepower to get through 18-corn because the stalk looks like it needs to be cut for silage, that's letting me know that something's going real well in that fourth quarter and that plant all it wants to do is keep living.

1:03:33 Well, with that we'll probably wrap up. Adam, thank you so much for your time here this evening. I learned a lot. I hope everyone else did as well. This is recorded and so we will have this link available sometime later this week if you want to share this with people that you think would find the information valuable. As well as all the rest of our webinars, those are on our website and on our YouTube page. Next week I believe we have Christine Jones on so we're excited for that talk as well. And that'll be at 5:30 Central time, same time as this week. So thank you again Adam for your time. Do you have any closing thoughts for us?

1:04:12 I just appreciate you all having me. I'm sorry, I planned on not going so long-winded, but you know how it is. Everybody says I talk slow anyways, but that's a geographical phenomenon so I can't help it. But no folks, I'm open. Dale knows me, Noah, Keith, all of them, Jimmy Evans, good to hear from him. Reach out to me. You know, I may not get right back with you, but I'll try not to let any answers or questions get passed by me. I'm always hoping to try to help. That's all we're trying to do. We're all in this together. And I'm just admirable of everybody that's tuned in that, no matter where you're at in this journey, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate your interest in it and I'm sincerely wishing you all the best.

1:05:01 So thank you all. Well, it's just like he said. Obviously Adam is somebody that is in it to help you guys out. So for those questions that I did not get answered, his email address is right there if you guys want to send those to him. Adam, thanks again. Dale and Keith, thanks for hopping on. We'll see you guys all next week for Dr. Christine Jones. Have a good.